More on eight prisoners escaping in Beira – AIM report

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More on eight prisoners escaping in Beira – AIM report

9:46 CAT | 06 Nov 2018

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Eight prisoners escaped from the main prison in the central Mozambican city of Beira early on Sunday morning by sawing through the bars on their cell windows, according to a report on the independent television station STV.

Among the escapees is Isaias Nicolau, who was arrested with two others in late December 2017, accused of murdering a Portuguese citizen, Ines Bota, whose body was found in the Pungue river.

According to police the three suspects, including Nicolau, confessed to the crime. They admitted to abducting Bota, and forcing her to drive to cash machines, where they used her bank cards to withdraw 29,000 meticais (about 496 US dollars), which the three divided among themselves.

They then drove for about 70 kilometres out of Beira to the banks of the Pungue, where they decided to kill Bota for fear that she would be able to identify them. They tied her up and threw her into the river.

Another prominent escapee is Moniz Bambo, who was sentenced a month ago to 16 years imprisonment for his part in theft of over 29 million meticais from a Beira branch of the country’s largest commercial bank, the Millennium-BIM.

The director of the prison, Yazalde de Sousa, said that six of the escapees, including Nicolau, were in preventive detention, awaiting trial, and only two were serving sentences. He said the escape took place between 02.00 and 03.00 on Sunday morning, and that efforts are now under way to recapture the fugitives. He did not explain how the prisoners had acquired the tools to saw through the bars.

In August 2017, 17 prisoners escaped from the same jail, including Moniz Bambo, who was later recaptured. Both breakouts took place on a Sunday.

A week ago, the Sofala provincial chief attorney, Carolina Azarias, expressed her concern at the long delay in bringing the confessed murderers of Ines Bota to trial. The men had been charged, and all the relevant paperwork had been deposited with the court nine months ago.

Azarias could not understand the delay in setting a trial date when the suspects had already confessed. She insisted that Nicolau’s escape would not cause any further delay.

“It won’t affect the trial because there are other people accused in the same case”, she told STV. “Nicolau can be tried in absentia”.

Azarias was concerned that the Beira central prison is not a safe place for holding criminals, largely because it is old and overcrowded.

“It’s not because the people in charge of the prison are incompetent”, she said. “The problem is that the central prison is an old building, which was designed for a particular number of inmates. Now it is accommodating three times its capacity, and no work has been done so that the prison can support the extra inmates”.

Source: AIM