Mozambique: Three arrested for murder of conservationist – AIM

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Mozambique: Three arrested for murder of conservationist – AIM

7:00 CAT | 19 Oct 2021

Image: Miramar

The Mozambican police have arrested three people, suspected of Friday’s grisly murder of environmental activist Lara Muaves, according to Monday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Carta de Mocambique”.

Lara was attacked and killed on Friday night, as she was returning to her home in the Maputo neighbourhood of Costa do Sol. The killers then threw her body into a drainage channel.

According to a police source, cited by the paper, her personal property was stolen, and that is believed to have been the motive for the murder.

The police say that the three suspects, who have not been named, are stonemasons, who had been working on their victim’s house. One of them has confessed to the crime.

Lara was a marine biologist who became a senior official in the Mozambican branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). She was working with coastal communities, helping them develop sustainable livelihoods, while maintaining healthy coastal and marine environments.

The former director of WWF-Mozambique, Anabela Rodrigues, described Lara as “a passionate conservationist”. She had opened the WWF office on the island of Ibo off the coast of the northern province of Cabo Delgado, and Rodrigues recalled that she was “devastated” when WWF was forced to close that office, because of terrorist attacks in Cabo Delgado.

Rodrigues found it hard to believe that Lara had met with “such a violent and abominable death”. The country needs more Laras, she wrote, more professionals “who do what they do with passion, honesty, transparency and courage”.

The gap that Lara leaves will be difficult to fill, concluded Rodrigues.

Source: AIM