Watch: Ex-MP, four others given prison terms for backing Renamo ‘Military Junta’ – Lusa

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Watch: Ex-MP, four others given prison terms for backing Renamo ‘Military Junta’ – Lusa

10:04 CAT | 09 Sep 2020

Photo: Miramar

To avoid jail, each defendant will have to pay 175,000 meticais in the next 15 days, to convert the sentence into a fine.

Sandura Ambrósio, a former member of parliament for Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, and four other defendants accused of supporting a group of armed dissidents have been sentenced to five years in prison, although with the option of those sentences being suspended.

To avoid jail, each defendant will have to pay 175,000 meticais (€2,452) in the next 15 days, to convert the sentence into a fine, according to the ruling handed down on Tuesday by the Judicial Court of Dondo District, in central Mozambique.

The judge in the case, Carlitos Teófilo, said that it had been proved that Ambrósio, along with António Bauase, Gabriel José Domingos, Eugénio Joaquim Domingos and Aníva Bernardo, had committed the crime of conspiracy, in having financed the activities of the self-styled Junta Militar da Renamo, an armed group of dissidents within the party.

The group is accused by the Mozambican authorities of carrying out armed attacks that have already claimed the lives of more than 20 people since August last year in the centre of the country.

Reacting to the ruling, lawyers for the five defendants said that they would appeal the decision.

On 22 July, speaking to journalists in the city of Beira by telephone from an unknown location in central Mozambique, the leader of the Renamo dissident group denied that Ambrósio had financed his group, and suggested that his detention had been politically motivated.

Ambrósio had been a Renamo member of the parliament that ended in January, but had last year already announced his departure from the party to join the Movimento Democrático de Moçambique (MDM), the third-largest party in parliament.

The former deputy stood again in the legislative elections of 15 October last year, this time for the MDM, in the constituency of Sofala, but was not elected.

The self-proclaimed Renamo junta challenges the legitimacy of the party’s leadership and the peace agreement it signed with the Frelimo government in August last year. The authorities accuse it of undertaking attacks on security forces and civilians in villages and on some stretches of road in the central region of the country.

Source: Lusa / Sala da Paz