Mozambique: Police chief orders forces to keep up search for Renamo dissidents – Lusa

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Mozambique: Police chief orders forces to keep up search for Renamo dissidents – Lusa

7:43 CAT | 14 Apr 2021

File photo: Noticias

The Mozambican police commander on Wednesday ordered the Defence and Security Forces to continue operations to locate members of the main opposition party’s dissident group accused of carrying out attacks in central Mozambique.

“Keep looking for those people who have not yet surrendered [to the peace process], those from the supposed Renamo Military Junta. Continue looking for them so that they respond to justice, and some of them will then move on to Demilitarisation, Disarmament and Reintegration [DDR],” Bernardino Rafael said during a meeting with members of the corporation as part of a visit to the central Mozambican province of Sofala.

The Renamo Military Junta, a splinter group of the main opposition party headed by former guerrilla leader Mariano Nhongo, contests the leadership of Renamo and the conditions for demobilisation arising from the peace agreement, and is pointed out by the authorities as being responsible for armed attacks in the centre of the country that have killed at least 30 people since 2019.

The police commander directed the Defence and Security Forces to continue to ensure security on roads in the region, considering cooperation with the communities fundamental.

“Continue in readiness, control the free movement in the Muchungue, Inchope and Caia section,” Bernardino Rafael stressed, in an allusion to the sections most affected by the incursions of the self-proclaimed Renamo military junta.

In recent months, several influential members of the group have left the bush and joined the peace process, but their leader maintains his claims, accusing the defectors of treason.

On Thursday, the leader of the Renamo military junta threatened to undermine the governing of six provinces in central and northern Mozambique if a letter of demands allegedly sent to the authorities was ignored.

The peace agreement in Mozambique was signed in August 2019 by the Mozambican head of state, Filipe Nyusi, and Renamo president Ossufo Momade, providing, among other things, the conditions for the DDR process of the armed arm of the main opposition party.

Source: Lusa