Vilanculos murder, one year on: Mozambican magistrates denounce threats

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Vilanculos murder, one year on: Mozambican magistrates denounce threats

3:09 CAT | 11 Apr 2017

Lusa (File photo) / A view of Central Maputo

One year after the murder of public prosecutor Marcelino Vilanculos, the Mozambican Association of Magistrates of the Public Prosecutor’s Office yesterday denounced the intimidation of judges.

“We have expressed our repudiation of situations of intimidation of magistrates. We know the risks we are facing, but we are firm and determined [in the fight against crime],” association president Eduardo Sumana told a press conference.

Speaking on the anniversary of the April 11, 2016 assassination of Marcelino Vilanculoc, Sumana said that the campaign of intimidation would not result.

“They may be able to threaten one or another magistrate on their own, but they will fail,” Sumana said. The association is holding a seminar on the safety of judges in Maputo this Tuesday.

Marcelino Vilanculos, who served in Maputo, was shot dead in the city of Matola, about eight kilometres from the Mozambican capital, as he drove home in his car.

At the time, the magistrate was in charge of investigations into abductions allegedly involving Danish Satar, nephew of Nini Satar, who served a prison sentence in the murder of journalist Carlos Cardoso in 2000.

Danish Satar was deported from Italy to Mozambique at the end of last year after secretly leaving the country while on provisional release in a case in which he was accused of being involved in abductions.

In 2014, Dinis Silica, a judge involved in cases related to a wave of abductions in Maputo, was shot dead in broad daylight in the Mozambican capital by persons unknown.

Several people have been sentenced to long prison terms for involvement in abductions, although it remains a relatively frequent crime in some Mozambican cities, especially Maputo.

Source: Lusa