Magistrate advocates gun buyback program to deal with illegal firearms in Mozambique

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Magistrate advocates gun buyback program to deal with illegal firearms in Mozambique

8:08 CAT | 06 Sep 2016

Public prosecutor Octavio Zilo proposed in Maputo on Friday offering financial incentives for handing in illegally held firearms as a way of reducing the proliferation of illegal weapons in Mozambique.

Talking about kidnappings in a seminar on “Dynamic Current Crime in Mozambique: Challenges for Prevention and Fight”, Zilo, who is a state prosecutor in Maputo province, said that the proliferation of illegal weapons in civilian hands was one of the factors exacerbating the crime of rape.

Commenting on a warning from the city of Maputo police commander on Wednesday to holders of unlicenced weapons to surrender them to the authorities within a week, Zilo said: “For me, simply delivering ultimatums to gun owners without a licence is not enough. I think we should provide financial incentives for those who hand in weapons voluntarily.”

The magistrate pointed to greed, unemployment and poverty as among the main causes of the burgeoning number of kidnappings in Mozambique between 2011 and 2012, which has now also reached the Portuguese community, particularly in and around Maputo.

“Society and the justice administration institutions were caught off guard by kidnappings. We had to be creative and engineer a condemnation of the perpetrators of abductions because this crime wasn’t even typified [in the criminal code, at the time],” Zilo said.

Having in the first years resorted to other charges to prosecute kidnappers, Mozambique in 2014 passed a new Penal Code, which provides for this type of crime, with sentences of over 20 years rising to 40 years in case of the death of the victim.

Zilo said that establishing specialized units to investigate abductions, better qualification for judicial system operators and better monitoring of suspect banking transactions were necessary to stop this type of crime.

“It is utopian to think that we will ever totally eliminate abduction as a crime because there it has always existed, in all societies, but it is possible to work on measures to reduce numbers,” Zilo said.

In information provided to parliament in June, the Attorney General of the Republic of Mozambique, Beatriz Buchili, said the country recorded 19 cases of kidnapping last year, compared to 42 cases in 2014, representing a decrease of 54.7 percent.

Regarding abductions registered in 2015, the Mozambican public prosecutor filed 36 charges against 20 in 2014, of which four cases went to trial, one of which resulted in convictions with sentences of between 12 to 23 years in prison.

“Maputo city recorded the highest number of abductions in 2015, with 12, against 14 in 2014, followed by Maputo province, with four cases against eight in the previous year,” the document reads.

Source: Notícias ao Minuto