23 July 2008
Maputo — The gang that kidnapped a Dutch woman in Maputo two weeks ago were rounded up almost immediately by the police because of the cell phone they used to demand a ransom, reports Wednesday's issue of the Maputo weekly "Magazine Independente" (MI).
The woman, Nicole Almeida Matos, is the sister-in-law of prominent Mozambican businessman Antonio Almeida Matos, and works for the Maputo office of the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation. She was kidnapped on 10 July as she was jogging along the Maputo coast road.
The four assailants abducted her at gunpoint, bundled her into a car, and drove her to a house in Boane, 30 kilometres west of Maputo. Here they rang up her family and demanded 100,000 dollars ransom, otherwise they would never see Nicole again.
When the family said they could only obtain 20,000 dollars at short notice, the kidnappers accepted this. The family followed the gang's instructions to drop off the money in the Maputo neighbourhood of Triunfo, and then Nicole Matos was released, unharmed, but badly shaken by her experience.
The family did not involve the police in the payment of the ransom - but they did supply the police with the details of the phone calls. Although the gang's mobile phone was using a private number, police investigators, with the help of the mobile phone company Mcel, were able, very quickly, to locate the gang, and before they had spent much of the money.
According to one of MI's police sources, "orders from the top" were given to solve the case as quickly as possible. No doubt the authorities feared that, unless they arrested the criminals very speedily, then a spate of copycat kidnappings might follow. Abducting the relatives of the rich might seem an easy way of making money.
Initially, the General Command of the police told reporters that the leader of the gang, named only as Mauro, was a fourth year law student at the country's oldest university, the Eduardo Mondlane University. But this story seems to have been made up by Mauro himself, and police are still checking whether the university has any knowledge of him.
A police source told MI that Mauro is the son of a high ranking customs officer, a woman who owns the house in Boane where Nicole Matos was held, and another house in Triunfo, also used by the gang. Mauro is also alleged to have traveled repeatedly to China and Japan to deal with unspecified business dealings of his mother.
MI adds that the police are now investigating how Mauro's mother obtained the money used to purchase the two houses.
Mauro and his three companions are currently held in the Maputo top security prison, awaiting trial for kidnapping and extortion.
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