Analysis: Attorney General’s Office extradition request seeks to protect Manuel Chang

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Analysis: Attorney General’s Office extradition request seeks to protect Manuel Chang

1:09 CAT | 18 Jan 2019

Elisio de Sousa (photo: DW)

Lawyer Elisio de Sousa says the Mozambican request for extradition should not go ahead because bilateral agreements must prevail over multilateral, which gives priority to the United States.

Manuel Chang’s chief defence lawyer said on Thursday that the Mozambican authorities had also asked the South African authorities to extradite the former Mozambican finance minister. According to Rudi Krause, the request was made on 10 January.

The same request had already been made by the United States Court, which accuses Chang of financial crimes. What are the chances that the Mozambican request will succeed? Criminal law expert Elísio de Sousa recalls earlier that a request in that regard would leave the South African court in a complicated situation.

“Mozambique has extradition agreements with all of the SADC. However, there is a special extradition agreement with the United States, and in a very technical way, the first request to be served would be the American one. We should note the US has an extradition agreement with South Africa. The final rules dictate that bilateral agreements should prevail over multilateral agreements,” he says.

De Sousa also points out that the US already has an arrest warrant. “This means that the process is already at a much more advanced stage than the Mozambican process. The reaction of the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) was only to Chang’s arrest in South Africa, which appears to be a reaction rather than an action,” he argues.

Attempt to protect Manuel Chang

For Manuel Chang’s lawyer, it is clear that the Government of Mozambique has instructed its own process and that the Mozambican attorney general is at an advanced stage in the process developed under Mozambican law. Krause also understands that the request seeks to ensure that the Mozambican judicial process may have the opportunity to proceed. But de Sousa does not have the same understanding.

“The PGR is trying to protect Chang and not necessarily instruct the process. Looking at history and chronology for the facts, it suggests that there is a suspicious coincidence in the PGR’s sudden interest in having Manuel Chang subject to Mozambican justice,” he says.

The South African lawyer believes that Chang “is not a person extraditable to the United States, and if he is not extradited to that country, he should have the right to return to his homeland”.

Without political interference

On 14 January, after the Mozambican extradition request was officially signed, the President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa visited Mozambique. Little has transpired on the agenda of the meeting he held with his counterpart Filipe Nyusi, but it was thought that this was one of the main topics in debate. Is there any possibility of political interference in the process?

Journalist Fernando Lima thinks not.

“I would not be surprised if there is such political interference in Mozambique. Already in relation to South Africa I would be more surprised. In addition to this, and precisely because there is this suspicion that there may be political cooperation, I think it was intentional that the final communiqué of the meeting between Cyril Ramaphosa and Filipe Nyusi stressed that justice must take its course,” he says.

But we must remember the strong historical ties between the two neighbouring countries. They take on siblings and share common interests. For journalist Fernando Lima, neither of these elements should surprise us.

“It should be emphasised that Ramaphosa came to power as an alternative to Jacob Zuma, who has a series of corruption cases hanging over him. So it is more complicated that a president who interrupted Jacob Zuma’s own mandate because of corruption problems should become explicitly involved in a process that has to do with the legal system, and more traditionally in South Africa there is a lot of respect for this separation of powers, which is not the case in Mozambique,” he notes.

Source: DW