Serial burglar caught at last – Watch

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Serial burglar caught at last – Watch

7:48 CAT | 16 Sep 2018

Photo: Miramar

André Machava Júnior, a man long wanted by the police and leader of a gang that terrorised victims in several neighbourhoods of Maputo, has finally been caught.

Standing in handcuffs in the courtyard of the PRM Command in Maputo City two years after Maputo Judicial Court first issued a warrant for his arrest, Junior, once described as “a young cold man with a long criminal record”, said he had lost count of his victims over his six years of crime.

“How many houses have you robbed?” a reporter asks. “I have no idea anymore,” he replies. “I am a thief.”

Firearms and machetes were the preferred accompaniments to his criminal incursions. Fellow burglar Elias Francisco, aged 21 and also detained, as is “Anastacio”, said that during robberies he always asked his boss not to “violate” the victims. “I only carried the machete,” he says. “And I always asked him not to use it.”

One of his victims, a young woman who asked for security reasons that her name not be revealed, says she was robbed and abducted by the gang. “They told us to kneel down with our hands on our heads and said: “Stay there or we will kill you.” And we did too, like for ten minutes after they had left,” she says.

Police in Maputo say they are tightening the noose on criminal activity, and are still searching for other suspected gang members.