Mozambique: Court orders detention of Venancio Mondlane’s finance chief

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Mozambique: Court orders detention of Venancio Mondlane’s finance chief

9:26 CAT | 17 Mar 2025

File photo: DR / RFI

The Maputo City Judicial Court has ordered the preventive detention of Venâncio Mondlane’s finance chief, the Mozambican politician said on Friday.

“My representative, Glória Nobre Chire, has become a political prisoner. The judge has decided to send her to prison,” Mondlane said on his Facebook page.

Glória Monteiro Nobre Chire was detained late Wednesday morning at her home in Maputo and, according to her family, the reason is still unknown.

“I was with her when it happened (…). It was [an] unprecedented police contingent. We don’t know the reason for the detention,” Aline Nobre Chire, one of the daughters, told Lusa on Friday outside the 8th police station in Maputo, where the detainee was held.

During a livestream today on his Facebook page, Mondlane said that the woman responsible for his finances was “detained and psychologically tortured”.

According to Mondlane, Glória Monteiro Nobre Chire was prevented from speaking to her family and lawyer for 48 hours, but today she was brought before an investigating judge.

“She was locked up, she couldn’t see her family, she was made out to be a criminal or a terrorist, without the presumption of innocence,” said the politician.

Glória Monteiro Nobre Chire, 59, is a retired accountant who is currently in charge of the finances of Venâncio Mondlane, the former presidential candidate who is leading the challenge to the results of the 9 October elections in Mozambique.

Mozambique’s attorney general’s office (PGR) has opened proceedings against Mondlane, accusing the politician, above all, of inciting violence in the post-election demonstrations that have marked the country in recent months.

On Tuesday, Venâncio Mondlane was heard by the PGR about one of the eight cases in which he is being targeted.

“I was asked a barrage of questions that took all this time. They are questions that have to do with the encouragement of demonstrations, incitement to violence, damage to the economy. I answered these questions without knowing exactly what crime I was accused of,” Mondlane told the media outside the PGR after almost 10 hours of questioning.

Mozambique’s public prosecutor’s office has imposed an order that Mondlane must periodically report his identity and residence to the authorities.

On 22 November, the public prosecutor’s office demanded €1.5 million in compensation for the damage caused by the demonstrations in Maputo province, in a new lawsuit against Mondlane and Podemos, the party that supported him until February this year.

This was the second civil lawsuit of its kind to be announced, after another that the public prosecutor’s office filed with the Maputo Judicial Court, only concerning damage in the capital, asking for compensation of 32,377,276.46 meticais ( €486,000).

On 27 January, the PGR announced the opening of proceedings, considering that Mondlane’s self-styled ‘presidential decree’ subverts the principles of the democratic state.

Mondlane, named by the Constitutional Council as the second most voted in the 9 October presidential elections, is leading the biggest challenge to the election results Mozambique has seen since the first multiparty elections in 1994.

The vote gave victory to Daniel Chapo, who has already been sworn in as Mozambique’s fifth President.

Since the demonstrations began in October, at least 353 people have died as a result of clashes between police and protesters, including around two dozen minors, and around 3,500 have been injured during the protests, according to the Decide electoral platform, a non-governmental organisation monitoring the process.

The Mozambican government confirmed at least 80 deaths, as well as the destruction of 1,677 commercial establishments, 177 schools and 23 health centres during the demonstrations.

Source: Lusa