Week long blitz to clear backlog of court cases in Maputo, Manica and Nampula

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Week long blitz to clear backlog of court cases in Maputo, Manica and Nampula

10:46 CAT | 10 Jun 2017

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Mozambican courts will attempt to clear a backlog of cases with a blitz of trials in four provinces – Maputo, Manica and Nampula provinces and Maputo City – in just one week.

The problem facing the courts is that many hundreds of suspects have been in preventive detention for much longer than the legal time limit. The Supreme Court wants these people released or definitively sentenced.

The trials will involve 176 judges, prosecutors, lawyers from the Mozambican Bar Association (OAM), and staff of the Ministry of Justice and of the Legal Aid Institute (IPAJ).

Announcing this campaign at a Maputo press conference on Friday, the spokesperson for the Supreme Court, Pedro Nhatitima, said that currently 5,104 citizens are being held in preventive detention. In 1,306 cases the time limit for preventive detention has expired.

He added that the week-long campaign will seek to deal with the pending problem of citizens held in preventive detention for far too long, and will also take into account the provisions of the new Penal Code, approved in 2015, for alternative penalties other than imprisonment (such as community service).

Nhatitima pointed out that the Penal Code envisages applying these “alternative penalties” in the cases of all people sentenced to between two and eight year prison terms. “The campaign”, he said, “is intended to survey these situations and take the pertinent decisions”.

“In this way, the justice sector is clarifying the legal situation of citizens who are detained”, he added. “That is, it is safeguarding their rights, because we have citizens who have been detained for longer than the legally envisaged deadlines, and that is a violation of their rights and their freedoms”.

Nhatitima said the campaign will also allow full application of the new Penal Code provisions on alternative penalties, allowing those found guilty to provide socially useful work, or pay fines, instead of going to jail.

Nhatitima claimed that the purpose of the campaign is not to relieve the overcrowding in Mozambican prisons – although clearly that could be a side effect. Mozambican jails have the capacity to hold 8,188 inmates, yet currently they hold 18,000 prisoners. If 1,000 people currently under preventive detention were to be acquitted, or given non-custodial sentences in the next week, that could offer substantial relief to several overcrowded prisons.

The week long campaign is supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). If it is successful, it will be extended to other parts of the country.

Source: AIM