Mozambique: Government promises “every effort” in Pondeca case

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Mozambique: Government promises “every effort” in Pondeca case

6:52 CAT | 10 Oct 2016

AIM (File photo) / Minister of the Interior of Mozambique Basilio Monteiro

Mozambican Interior Minister Basilio Monteiro told reporters on Monday that the government has instructed the police to devote “every effort” to tracking down the killers of Jeremias Pondeca, a senior figure in the rebel movement Renamo, who was gunned down on Maputo’s Costa do Sol beach on Saturday morning.

Pondeca was a member of the Council of State, a consultative body that advises the President of the Republic, and also a member of the Joint Commission set up between the government and Renamo to prepare a face-to-face meeting between President Filipe Nyusi and Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama.

Monteiro told a Maputo press conference that, as soon as the police learnt of the murder it set investigations into motion. All possible lines of investigation will be followed, he pledged, and the police have been ordered “to make every effort so that the perpetrators may be found and brought to justice”.

He urged all citizens who have any information on the murder, or who may have witnessed it, to come forward and cooperate with the police. “All lines of inquiry leading to clues will be properly valued”, Monteiro promised.

He declined to speculate on motives for the crime. “All hypotheses are open”, he said. “For the police, crimes are treated as crimes – it is in the subsequent investigations that motives may come to light”.

Asked about earlier unsolved crimes, such as the murder of constitutional lawyer Gilles Cistac in central Maputo in March 2015, and the attempted murder of Renamo General Secretary Manuel Bissopo in Beira in January this year, Monteiro said “none of these investigations have been closed”.

But the police faced serious difficulties when potential witnesses failed to cooperate. Monteiro said this was particularly the case in Beira, where people failed to obey summonses, or changed their addresses and could no longer be located.

When a reporter pointed out that, as a member of the Council of State, Pondeca was entitled to police protection, Monteiro said he did not know why there was no bodyguard with Pondeca. “All these aspects will be investigated”, he promised.

Source: AIM