Mozambique: Prosecutor shelves case against ‘Canal’ editor

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Mozambique: Prosecutor shelves case against ‘Canal’ editor

3:32 CAT | 01 Mar 2021

Picture: DW

The Maputo city Attorney General’s Office has shelved a criminal case that had been filed against the executive editor of the weekly Canal de Moçambique, Matias Guente, for alleged violation of state secrecy, the journalist told Lusa on Monday.

“I was notified of the shelving of the case, on the grounds that the constitutive elements of the type of crime of which I was accused had not been found,” he said.

Guente noted that the Public Prosecution Service’s decision states that the shelving of the case does not prevent any person who feels injured in the matter initiating legal action on their own initiative.

The Maputo Prosecutor’s Office accused Canal de Moçambique of violating state secrecy after the publication in 2020 of an article about a contract between the Mozambican government and the US multinational Anadarko for the security of natural gas projects in Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique.

Anadarko’s lead position in the project ended up being taken over by the French multinational Total, when it bought the American company’s operations in Cabo Delgado.

Fire.dw_.dw_ — *Canal de Moçambique newsroom, after the fire, in July 2020. [File photo: DW]*

Infernal environment

In an interview with DW Africa, after being questioned in September [by the PGR] last year, the executive editor of Canal de Moçambique said he considered the case against him “ridiculous” and classified it as “infernal” the environment in which journalists work in the country.

Guente argued that a journalist “is not bound by state secrets” and revealed pressures that he was previously subjected to and which, in his view, would have culminated in the current process.

It is “a pile of lawsuits-including this one which is the most ridiculous, for violating alleged state secrets,” he said.

At the time, Matias Guente also associated the case of which he was the target to the fire in Canal de Moçambique. “We have no doubt that all of this is related.”

Source: Deutsche Welle