Macossa bodies – Macuácua says government has satisfied recommendations

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Macossa bodies – Macuácua says government has satisfied recommendations

4:08 CAT | 09 Aug 2016

File photo / Edson Macuácua

Although the autopsy of the eleven bodies found dumped in the bush in Macossa, Manica province, and assumed to be victims of the current political and military conflict, is still incomplete, parliamentarian Edson Macuacua has said that, having reviewed the data, he considers that the government and organs of justice have complied with the recommendations of parliament for the clarification of the case.

Medical tests are however still ongoing in the Central Hospital of Beira in Sofala, with the results intended to facilitate a judicial ruling in the criminal case mounted in Manica against persons unknown.

The eleven bodies were found under a bridge in the course of investigations by foreign and local press into a supposed mass grave in Sofala containing 120 bodies whose existence remains so far unproved.

Government and judicial authorities who conducted the burial after the discovery decided to exhume the corpses for medical examination to determine the causes of death and the criminally liability of any author of the action, it being strongly suspected that the deaths are linked to the country’s enduring political and military conflict.

Yesterday, the head of the parliamentary Justice, Legal and Constitutional Affairs commission, Edson Macuacua, said that both the government and the justice system had complied with the commission’s recommendations in so far as concerns the efforts to solve the case.

The commission visited the site last June, and determined that such a scenario constituted clear evidence of a serious human rights violation.

The commission is working in Manica to determine issues of legality and human rights, and believes that the political and military conflict has been a major stumbling block to the full exercise of these rights, despite the government’s commitment to their realisation.

The Provincial Commander of Police of the Republic of Mozambique in Manica, Armando Canheze Mude, told the Commission in June that the area where the bodies were found was prone to frequent armed incursions by Renamo, suggesting the possibility that that party was responsible for the crime.

Some days ago, a spokesman for the provincial prosecutor in Manica said that the prosecutor was waiting for the autopsy results to move the criminal proceedings forward. Inacio Vumbuca, who did not elaborate on the stage of the investigation, stressed that everything depended on the forensic examinations underway, leaving it to the doctors themselves to announce the date of completion.

Source: Diário de Moçambique