Three years on, and assassination of Gilles Cistac is still without resolution

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Three years on, and assassination of Gilles Cistac is still without resolution

8:59 CAT | 06 Mar 2018

DW / Gilles Cistac, murdered in Maputo.

The Franco-Mozambican constitutionalist Gilles Cistac was killed by gunfire in 2015. The perpetrators of the crime have not yet been identified.

It has been three years since the assassination of Franco-Mozambican constitutional lawyer Gilles Cistac and the perpetrators of the crime have still to be identified. Political motivations may be at the source of the slow pace of the investigation.

So far it is not known exactly if the Police of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM) detained any suspects or even had concrete clues, but the case has already passed to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (PGR), as police spokesman Inacio Dina revealed to DW Africa.

For this reason, the PRM says that it has nothing more to say about this case.

“In respect of the procedural stage, the police and SERNIC were involved in the investigation, but at this moment, questions about the present stage the process must be addressed to the public prosecution service,” the police spokesman said.

Neither could the PRM provide information as to the date on which the case handed over to the PGR.

Political motivations

Mosambik Elisio Sousa Anwalt Kriminalist (privat) — *Mozambican criminal law expert Elísio Sousa*

For criminologist and lawyer Elísio Sousa, the prosecutor’s office would have much material to start investigating. “It was a crime perpetrated in broad daylight, in a zone and at an hour with a lot of activity, so there is no reason to say that there are insufficient elements to begin to track down the murderers”, he explains.

Regarding the reasons for the delay in resolving the case, they seem to have nothing to do with just the difficulty in investigations. “Although it is a process with some complexity in its investigation, as for the delay, it seems to me that there is some lethargy on the part of the responsible organs,” Sousa says. He believes that the authorities are making the minimum effort to clarify this case.

Image result for Assassinato de Gilles Cistac completa três anos e segue sem resolução

The political sensitivity underlying this case may be at the root of the lethargy in which the process is plunged. “In fact, this case raises political considerations, because we know that in the last days of Professor Cistac’s life he made some pronouncements which, even though they were of legal nature, we do not have any doubts about this and we will not cover the sun with the sieve, as they say, had certain political overtones which disturbed the status quo,” he recalls.

Recalling the case

The constitutional lawyer was murdered in the centre of the Mozambican capital Maputo on March 3, 2015, after publicly acknowledging that there was no constitutional impediment to the claim of the largest opposition party, Renamo, to create autonomous provincial governments where it won the last general elections.

Just days before his assassination, Cistac was subjected to racist persecution and was accused of promoting subversion in the country by unidentified figures on social networks.

In addition to being a constitutional lawyer, Gilles Cistac was a professor, deputy director of research and development and coordinator of post-graduate courses at the Faculty of Law of Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo.

Source: Deutsche Welle