Mozambique: Court sentences three murderers of Portuguese woman, including the one still at large, to 30 years in prison

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: Court sentences three murderers of Portuguese woman, including the one still at large, to 30 years in prison

3:31 CAT | 06 May 2021

Photo: TVM

Isaías Mangote was tried in absentia, weighing on him an arrest warrant – he was among the 17 inmates who in 2018 escaped from the Beira Central Prison.

The Judicial Court of Sofala Province, in the city of Beira, sentenced on Thursday each of the three men accused of murdering Portuguese Inês Botas in December 2017 to the maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.

Danilo Lampião and Jonas Moiane heard the ruling today in the courtroom while Isaías Mangote was tried in absentia, weighing on him an arrest warrant – he was among the 17 inmates who in 2018 escaped from the Beira Central Prison.

The three were also ordered to pay a joint compensation of 1.5 million meticais (about 21,600 euros) in favour of the victim’s relatives.

“We fully subscribe to the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to apply the maximum penalty and if the penal code allowed us to apply 50 or 100 years, we would get there without hesitation, given the gravity of the crime,” said the judge, Domingos Muchinguere, in comments addressed to the convicts after reading the decision of the panel.

“Happily or unfortunately, the maximum sentence that our law provides for is 30 years,” he added.

Muchinguere noted that murder crimes “tend to increase” in Sofala province, central Mozambique: “if in 2019 we were judging one or two murder cases per month, today there are five or six.

“Every week we try murder crimes,” he said, considering it to be a “gloomy” and “calamitous” scenario.

In addition to murders following kidnapping or for economic reasons, such as Ines’s case, a large proportion of those that take place in the northern part of Sofala “are motivated by allegations of witchcraft” between family members, while in the south, crimes of passion prevail.

Inês Botas, 28, worked at the Ferpinta company in Beira and was reported missing on the night of 28 December 2017.

The body was found on the banks of the Pungwe River and the autopsy concluded that she was killed by drowning with previous head trauma.

The group that committed the crime, which included her physical trainer, tied the hands of the victim, still alive, throwing her into the river, after stealing bank cards.

The three confessed to the murder, claiming that they intended to steal Ines’ money.

Watch the TVM report below.