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Mozambique: Police Blame Releases for Crime
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
22 January 2008
Posted to the web 22 January 2008
Maputo
The Mozambican police have tried to blame a recent upsurge in crime in Maputo and the neighbouring city of Matola on the Public Prosecutor's Office.
Prosecutors recently ordered the release of about 40 detainees from Maputo jails. The police had accused them of various crimes, but they had not come to trial. In some cases, the prosecutors refused to press charges on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence, and in others the suspects were given conditional freedom on payment of bail.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, the spokesperson for the General Command of the police, Pedro Cossa, claimed that the rise in crime over the past week was "predictable".
Cossa said that in Maputo city alone the police had recorded 44 crimes in the past week, compared with 39 in the previous week. But whether this is a significant rise, or just a statistical blip, is doubtful.
Cossa said "it's possible that some of those released have looked into their conscience and opted for an honest life. But also there may be those who have gone back to committing crimes". He thus assumed that those released are indeed dangerous criminals, although no court had found them guilty of anything.
"We shall continue to work case by case until we discover who has committed each crime", he said. The police would watch each of the suspects who had been released "but until they commit a crime, they will not be detained".
Police and prosecutors have frequently failed to see eye to eye over detentions. Police failure to provide convincing evidence often leads prosecutors to refuse to press charges.
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Ordinary citizens have complained when they see men they regard as criminals walking the streets, not realizing that they may simply have been granted conditional freedom while awaiting trial.
Real or imagined police or court inability to deal with crime has sometimes led to lynchings as mobs take the law into their own hands, and execute people they believe to be thieves. In December a lynch mob clashed with police in the central town of Gondola when they tried to seize three alleged thieves whom the district attorney had ordered release for lack of evidence.
This was a serious riot, in which the health centre where the alleged thieves were receiving medical treatment was damaged, and three vehicles were destroyed. After this the provincial attorney's office overruled the local prosecutor, and thought it prudent to order the re-arrest of the three men.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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