Three arrested for involvement in the kidnapping of a Portuguese-Mozambican citizen in Maputo

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Three arrested for involvement in the kidnapping of a Portuguese-Mozambican citizen in Maputo

5:29 CAT | 04 Mar 2025

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: The Probe]

The victim is 57 years old and was kidnapped on February 21 by a group of four armed people in Polana Cimento.

The Mozambican police have arrested three suspects for involvement in the kidnapping of a Portuguese-Mozambican citizen on February 21, a source from the National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic) announced on Tuesday, confirming that they had not rescued the victim.

“We are talking about a group that is indicted for the crimes of robbery, criminal association and possession of prohibited weapons. They are believed to have participated in the kidnapping that occurred on February 21 of this year, in which a Mozambican citizen was the victim,” said Hilário Lole, spokesman for Sernic in the city of Maputo, during a press conference.

A Portuguese-Mozambican man was kidnapped on 21 February by a group of four armed individuals in Polana Cimento, in the city of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, a source from Sernic told Lusa.

“The victim is a 57-year-old man of Portuguese origin,” Hilário Lole told Lusa.

According to the police, the man was kidnapped at around 7:00 am (two hours less in Lisbon), at the Olympic Committee compound, in the Polana Cimento neighbourhood, an upmarket area of the Mozambican capital, by four men with an AK47.

Speaking to the media, the Sernic spokesperson said that in the operation that culminated in the arrest of the three suspects, the police also seized a pistol-type weapon with 16 rounds of ammunition and another round of ammunition from an AK47-type firearm, and assured that investigations were underway to neutralise the other four suspects.

The Mozambican police have indicated that one of the suspects is one of the more than 1,500 inmates who escaped last December from the Special Penitentiary of Maximum Security and Maputo Provincial facilities, located in Maputo province.

On 25 December, 1,534 inmates escaped after riots in the aforementioned facilities, located more than 14 kilometres from the centre of the Mozambican capital, which the police authorities considered to be a “premeditated action” and the responsibility of demonstrators who have been on the streets since October protesting against the results of the general elections.

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

Around 150 businesspeople have been kidnapped in Mozambique in the last 12 years and a hundred have left the country out of fear, according to figures released in July by the Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique (CTA), which argues that it is time for the government to say “enough is enough”.

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

The Mozambican police have recorded a total of 185 kidnappings up to March 2024 and at least 288 people have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in this type of crime since 2011, according to the latest figures released by the Ministry of the Interior.

Source: Lusa