11 January 2009
Maputo — Did the assassin and fugitive Luis de Jesus Tomas ("Todinho") meet his death in a shoot-out with the Mozambican police on Monday night, or was he gunned down four days later?
What is certain is that his body was discovered in Malampsene, a neighbourhood of the southern city of Matola, on Thursday night. This was close to the area where a criminal gang abandoned their stolen Mitsubishi Pajero after a shoot out and car chase with the police that had taken them right across Maputo city.
Todinho was one of the three assassins who escaped on 7 December from the cells in the Maputo city police command. He had originally been arrested for the 2005 assassination of the director of the Maputo central prison, Jorge Microsse.
The discovery of his body near where the car had been dumped led to speculation that he had been in the car, and had been fatally wounded in the gun battle (during which two policemen were also injured). When his accomplices fled on foot, they abandoned the dead or dying Todinho.
But could a body really have gone unnoticed for four days? Particularly four extremely hot days with temperatures in the mid-30s, when a corpse would have rapidly begun to rot, with the stench bound to attract attention.
A second version of events is that Todinho was not killed until Thursday. When reporters from the independent television station, STV, visited Malampsene on Friday, they spoke to three security guards who protect the land where the body was found. They said that a Toyota Corolla drove up to the spot at about 23.15 on Thursday, and three shots rank out.
The Toyota left, but reappeared a few minutes later with a second vehicle, which they believed to be a Pajero. The occupants of both vehicles left in the Pajero, abandoning the Toyota with its lights on and the driver's door open.
The guards informed their employer of the shots, and he in turn contacted the police. 15 minutes later, after the police had arrived, Todinho's body was discovered, with two bullet wounds in the chest and one in the leg. He was carrying a plastic bag containing the traditional charms which superstitious criminals believe protect them from bullets.
A source in the Maputo police command, who demanded anonymity, told the STV reporters that Todinho had indeed been wounded in a shoot-out with the police (though he gave the date as Friday, 2 January, rather than Monday.
The police discovered he was receiving medical care in the home of a relative in the Matola neighbourhood of Infulene. Policemen went to this house, took out the weakened Todinho, who offered no resistance, and drove him to Malampsene where they summarily executed him.
Anonymous police sources are not necessarily trustworthy. Both STV ad AIM were led astray in December when one such anonymous source, believed to be reliable, claimed that the police had rearrested another of the murderers who escaped from the police command, Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), the man who led the death squad that assassinated investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso in November 2000. In fact, this story proved entirely untrue and Anibalzinho is still on the run.
In this case, however, STV's sister publication, the paper "O Pais" says that its newsroom on Thursday night received an anonymous phone call, from someone claiming to be a policeman, who said that the police had just shot Todinho. The STV/O Pais newsroom received that call at 23.30, five minutes after the time the guards said they heard the shots.
Todinho's body is currently in the morgue at Maputo Central Hospital. If the General Command of the police force is interested in discovering what really happened, it will have ordered a full autopsy. That should ascertain whether Todinho died on Monday or on Thursday, how many bullets hit him, and at what range they were fired.
The spokesperson for the Maputo city police command, Arnaldo Chefo, told reporters on Friday that investigations are under way to confirm whether Todinho was indeed a member of the gang chased by the police on Monday, and to ascertain the exact circumstances of his death.
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