The Mozambican Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic) on 5 May announced the arrest of three more members of a kidnap gang, two of them members of the police force, and one a Sernic agent.
All three are accused of participating in the abduction of businessman Bharat Kumar, who was kidnapped on 12 February in the bottle store he owns in downtown Maputo, within a stone's throw of the city's first police precinct.
Two of the men arrested are police officers stationed at the Maputo City Police Command, and the third is a Sernic agent who works at the Maputo Provincial Sernic Directorate. The three were not named.
The Sernic Maputo spokesperson, Hilario Lole, said the three personally took part in the abduction. But one of them was arrested because his image was caught on the bottle store's closed-circuit television.
On the security video footage, the suspect could be seen inside the shop wearing a blue shirt and talking on his phone, while the two others armed with a gun carried out the crime.
"The police launched a manhunt that led to the arrest of one of the gang members, tasked with the reconnaissance of the area, supplying every detail about the shopkeeper's routine to enable his kidnap," police spokesperson Leonel Muchina said, shortly after the crime.
Four days after this kidnapping, President Filipe Nyusi branded as completely unacceptable the transformation of police stations into breeding grounds for kidnappers. At the opening session of a meeting of the Consultative Council of the Ministry of the Interior, President Nyusi declared "I cannot accept that police stations become nests of kidnappers, and the commander of the station has top responsibility on the matter. If he does not know the life of his staff, he should resign from his post".
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"How come a kidnapping occurs just a few metres away from a police station, with the victims shouting for help, but there was no rapid reaction by the police force?", President Nyusi asked.
Lole added that the three men are being charged with kidnapping and will now be presented to a magistrate to formalise their detention.
The three are protesting their innocence and claim to have been arrested unjustly. One of the policemen told reporters that Sernic had tortured him.
The latest arrests occur about a week after Attorney-General Beatriz Buchili had denounced police complicity in kidnapping.
Delivering her annual report on the State of Justice to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Buchili said that some of those who should be on the front line combatting the kidnappers are in league with them. "The involvement of some members of the police, lawyers, magistrates and other figures in the judiciary creates fragilities in investigating these cases", said Buchili, "and endangers the safety of those public servants who are committed to fighting against crime".
