Mozambique: 584 inmates who escaped from Maputo prisons have been recaptured – AIM

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Mozambique: 584 inmates who escaped from Maputo prisons have been recaptured – AIM

12:40 CAT | 22 Jul 2025

Photo: AIM

Mozambique’s National Prison Service (SERNAP) says it has recaptured 584 of the 1,534 inmates who escaped, last December, from the Maputo Central Prison and the adjacent top security prison.

According to SERNAP director-general, Ilídio Miguel, who was speaking on Monday, in Maputo, during the launch of the week commemorating the institution’s 50th anniversary, the statistics regarding the number of recaptured escapees are continuously being updated, “and currently 584 prisoners have been recaptured.”

However, Miguel did not mention the Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate the mass escapes or the massacre of some prisoners after they were recaptured. According to the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CDD), in addition to the 33 prisoners who died during the breakout itself many more were executed after they had been recaptured.

Miguel also complained that SERNAP faces the problem of overcrowding. “The number of prisoners we have exceeds our capacity”, he said. “We have around 20,000 inmates, when our capacity is for only half that number, which is a huge challenge”.

“In its five-year program for 2025-2029, the government has set itself the challenge of building 13 new prisons, including 10 district prisons and 3 regional prisons. This will enable us to tackle the issue of prison overcrowding”, Miguel said.

He added that SERNAP is carrying out measures for alternative sentences to prison, “which will be able to reduce the issue of overcrowding.”

“Our challenge is, even in the face of overcrowding, to strive for increasingly humane treatment of prisoners”, he said. “We need to address the issue of proper nutrition, the issue of health and, above all, their rehabilitation. Our main challenge is to rehabilitate the prisoners so that they can be reintegrated into society”.

Source: AIM