Children allegedly kidnapped and killed found in Chimoio

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Children allegedly kidnapped and killed found in Chimoio

3:29 CAT | 12 Apr 2022

Photo: Miramar

The two children who were thought to have been killed by a trader also suspected of trafficking in human organs resurfaced on Monday at a children’s home (Infantário Provincial de Manica) in Chimoio, central Mozambique, 11 days after their disappearance, police have announced.

The girls, aged 8 and 13, are said to have disappeared under strange circumstances, which sparked a popular protest over the alleged increase in child abductions supposedly related to trafficking in human organs, an incident that culminated in the death of a teenager shot in the head by police during the riots.

The minors appeared at the Infantário Provincial de Manica [ Manica Provincial Orphanage,. where they had been taken by a citizen who found them in the suburbs of Manica’s provincial capital, spokesman for the provincial command of the Police of the Republic of Mozambique in Manica, Mário Arnaça, told media.

“After the riot, as we had promised, work was carried out and from this work we discovered that the children were found in one of the streets and were placed in the infantário [children’s home]” for nine days, Arnaça said, insisting that this was not a case of kidnapping, as the people who instigated the riot believed.

The riot started when a group took to the street and destroyed two properties belonging to a local trader who was accused of having kidnapped the two minors, who happened to be the daughters of his employees.

Suspicions arose after the population allegedly found parts of human organs in two refrigerators belonging to the trader, after which a confrontation began with the police, who were trying to disperse the protesters.

Although the authorities ruled out the possibility of an attempted kidnapping, one of the minors presented a different version to the media, advancing that the two children had escaped from a vehicle that had abducted them while they were playing in the 25 de Junho neighbourhood.

“A car took us and went into town. When the car stopped and the driver got out, I opened the door and fled with her [the other victim]. When we got tired of running, we sat on a sidewalk and a woman came and took us to a police station, where we spent the night. The next day, we were taken to the ‘infantário’,” one of the minors said, speaking in the presence of her father.

The trader named as a suspect has previously been associated with prior attempts to kidnap minors and cases of organ trafficking, foiled by police in Manica.

The situation has antecedents in the province, judicial authorities having put the region on ‘red alert’ in 2012 in response to an “alarming” rise in cases of person and organ trafficking, many linked to witchcraft and other illicit enrichment practices.

Source: Lusa