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Mozambique: SERNIC switched from Interior Ministry to PGR – AIM report
1:41 CAT | 27 May 2025
Photo: AIM
The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Monday voted unanimously to place the Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) under the supervision of the Attorney-General’s Office (PGR), and not under the Interior Ministry.
The dispute over the relationship between criminal investigation and the government has lasted for decades. SERNIC’s predecessor, the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC), was unequivocally part of the Interior Ministry, but many jurists argued that this deprived PIC of necessary independence.
With the creation of SERNIC, the Interior Ministry insisted on keeping control, but it has now lost that battle. The new law also renames the SERNIC corps of investigators the “Judicial Police”, a term which seems to have been borrowed from Portuguese legislation.
Defending the change, the parliamentary commission on defence, security and public order, said that the nature of SERNIC as an investigative and technical body is not compatible with its current role as an administrative service.
The current placing of SERNIC, under the aegis of the Interior Ministry, also contradicted the principle of the separation of powers. There was thus no longer any doubt that criminal investigation is part of the judiciary and not the executive.
Introducing the government bill, Justice Minister Mateus Saize said that, with the new arrangement, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, will be able to set up specialist criminal investigation units, dealing with such crimes as trafficking in wildlife, cybercrime, and the falsification of currency.
During the parliamentary debate, the head of the parliamentary group of the former rebel movement Renamo, Jeronimo Malagueta, declared that Renamo has been calling for years for transferring supervision over SERNIC from the Interior Ministry to the PGR.
“In this Assembly, Renamo always argued that the Criminal Investigation Service should be a Judicial Police under the PGR, and not under the Interior Ministry”, said Malagueta, but the majority enjoyed by the ruling Frelimo Party always frustrated this desire.
Frelimo has now changed its mind, without any explanation. The Frelimo deputies voted, without exception, for the government bill, and the previous opposition to the principles enshrined in that bill evaporated.
The Attorney-General must now appoint the general director of SERNIC, and all the other senior figures in what will now be known as the Judicial Police, including the new specialist units.
READ: Mozambique: Criminal investigation police now under attorney general’s control
Source: AIM
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