“He was a tall young man. He took out his pistol, a couple of steps from the mayor, and fired three shots”

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“He was a tall young man. He took out his pistol, a couple of steps from the mayor, and fired three shots”

10:26 CAT | 05 Oct 2018

Mahamudo Amurane's funeral in Nampula. [Photo Deutsche Welle]

Mozambique celebrated Peace Day yesterday, but the unrest continues for the family and friends who demand justice for Mahamudo Amurane, the Nampula mayor killed a year ago.

“We continue to mourn our relative’s death,” the deceased mayor’s brother, Selemane Amurane, told Lusa, hoping that the case would be resolved one day.

The president of the City Council in Nampula, the main city in northern Mozambique, was 44 years old and on the ground floor of his house with a colleague when a man approached him and fired shots.

“He was a tall young man. He took out his pistol a couple of steps from the mayor and fired three shots at him,” Saide Ali, a councillor who was with Amurane at the time of the incident, told Lusa at the time.

The mayor was taken to a hospital in Nampula, but died at the end of the day when Mozambique was holiday celebrating the anniversary of the 1992 Peace Accords.

The family finds the silence of the authorities strange, noting the investigation’s similarity with other unsolved crimes in Mozambique.

The Mozambican prosecutor’s office last week announced an extension to the deadlines for investigating the case, adducing its “complexity”.

Police said on the day of Amurane’s murder they had “clear indications given by witnesses” that could lead to “detention of the suspect,” and a month later, the then Justice Minister Isac Chande announced that there were already six people who had been made ‘arguidos'[officially named suspects during a criminal investigation] in the case.

But, since then, there have been no further developments.

Earlier last week, a Mozambican police spokeswoman in Nampula had told Lusa that there were no new lines of inquiry and that “no-one had been charged”. However, the National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic) announced, at a press conference in Maputo on Wednesday, that there are 10 suspects and waiting to know if they will be charged by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Sernic added that among them are senior members of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), and that the investigation takes into account threats made against Amurane by some party members – information released by the investigative police only now, as elections approach.

The delay in clearing up the case does not satisfy those who were closest to Amurane.

“He was a good man, hardworking, and who defended the good of his people,” Selemane Amurane points out, explaining his feeling of injustice.

The case relaunched the debate over the unsolved successive murders of public figures in Mozambique.

Analysts Borges Nhamire and Baltazar Faela told Lusa at the time that the apparent impunity lent credence to the idea that crime in Mozambique had overwhelmed citizen’s fundamental rights and freedoms.

Following the assassination, the city of Nampula witnessed the emergence of the Liberal Party for Sustainable Development (PLDS), created by a group of friends and councillors in Amurane’s executive.

From the same group this year sprang the Mozambican Association of Justice, Peace and Solidarity ((AMAJPS), whose objective is to “continue the ideals of Mahamudo Amurane”.

Both are contesting the October 10 municipal elections.

Source: Lusa