Mozambique: Three sentenced to 30 years for kidnapping ; one still at large after jailbreak

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Mozambique: Three sentenced to 30 years for kidnapping ; one still at large after jailbreak

3:14 CAT | 23 Apr 2025

Photo: Notícias

Defendant Ilídio Balanço [convicted in absentia] has been on the run since December 25, when more than 1,500 people escaped from the Maximum Security Penitentiary, an escape that the authorities associate with the post-election protests that marked the last few months.

Maputo City Court, in the country’s capital, has handed 30-year prison sentences to three men involved in the kidnapping, in 2023, of the daughter of a businessman active in the commercial sector.

The defendants are Jersrit Armando Zimba, 37 years old; Serabino Massinguili (51); and Ilídio Balanço (46), the last of whom has been on the run since December 25 of last year after escaping from the Maximum Security Penitentiary Establishment, known as “B.O”.

The gang allegedly kidnapped, on November 1, 2023, a young woman named Zaquia Ahmed, in Maputo’s upmarket Shommershild neighbourhood. The victim was held captive in degrading conditions in the Sikuama neighborhood, in Matola municipality, for 51 days.

“The victim was deprived of her freedom for a prolonged period. She was chained, photographed in degrading conditions and used as a means of coercion to obtain ransom from her family, so the defendants should also be held responsible for this crime in an aggravated form,” explained the judge in charge of the case, Evandra Uamusse, during the reading of the sentence.

Ilídio Balanço has been on the run since December 25, when more than 1,500 people escaped from the Maximum Security Penitentiary, an escape that the authorities associate with the post-election protests that marked the last few months.

The defendants were convicted of the crimes of criminal association, kidnapping and intentional bodily harm and ordered to pay the legal costs arising from the case and compensation to the victim.

“To order the defendants to compensate the victim for the non-pecuniary damages caused, with the amount being determined in the settlement phase during the execution of the sentence,” said Judge Uamusse.

READ: Mozambique: Young woman kidnapped in central Maputo – AIM report

Since 2011, a wave of kidnappings has hit Mozambique, the victims mainly businesspeople of Asian descent and their families, a group that dominates commerce in the urban centres of the country’s provincial capitals.

On April 10, the Minister of the Interior admitted that the crime of kidnapping in Mozambique is complex, organized and transnational, and encourages capital flight, in addition to creating feelings of “insecurity”.

“Kidnapping is an organized and transnational crime, its ‘modus operandi’ is complex and affects society in the sense that it creates a feeling of widespread insecurity in society. It affects everyone,” Minister of the Interior, Paulo Chachine, said in parliament.

The Mozambican police recorded at least 205 kidnapping crimes between 2011 and March of this year, and acknowledges that there are “challenges” in stopping these incidents. The Mozambican police have arrested at least 302 people in connection with these cases, decommissioned several places used as prisons and seized firearms, as well as movable and immovable property.

“The provinces most affected by this type of crime were the city of Maputo, with 133 cases, followed by the provinces of Maputo and Sofala, with 48 and 9 cases respectively,” said Minister Chachine.

Between January 2024 and March of this year alone, the government official said, 19 completed kidnapping crimes were recorded, of which 15 were solved with the arrest of 33 people and the seizure of at least 12 firearms, 12 vehicles, 28 mobile phones, two computers and four residences used as hiding places.

The majority of kidnappings committed in Mozambique are planned outside the country, especially in South Africa, then-Attorney General of the Republic, Beatriz Buchili, said in parliament in April, 2024.

Source: Lusa / Notícias