Maputo — Disturbances broke out on Friday and Saturday at Maputo's top security prison (known colloquially as the B.O.), caused initially by changes in the rules for visits.
According to the general commander of the Mozambican police, Miguel dos Santos, interviewed by Mozambican television on Saturday, the prison management has suspended visits while the B.O. is being "reorganised". Family members who bring food to inmates can no longer deliver it personally, but must leave it at the prison reception.
Several hundred prisoners staged a protest on Friday by simply refusing to return to their cells. Every day, most of the prisoners are allowed into the open air for particular periods.
This time they disobeyed the order to return to their cells. Dos Santos claimed the situation was brought under control without violence.
The situation became much worse on Saturday, when angry prisoners vandalised cells. One of the cells that came under attack housed Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), one of the men accused of ordering the murder of the country's top investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso.
One of the reasons for this attack was certainly financial.
The prison management had put mosquito netting over the bars of Satar's cell windows, and the rioting prisoners tore it down.
The netting was put up, not to stop mosquitos entering the cell, but to prevent other prisoners from delivering prohibited items to Satar through the cell windows - notably mobile phones.
Satar has been using mobile phones to intimidate and to spy on witnesses in the Carlos Cardoso murder trial. No sooner is one mobile phone confiscated, than another is smuggled in to him.
The Satar family's wealth is such that Nini Satar has had no difficulty in bribing prisoners and guards to fetch him whatever he wants. The netting on the windows threatened this lucrative business, hence its destruction. Satar has now been moved to another cell.
When riot police brought the Saturday disturbances under control, TV cameras were invited into the prison. Apart from the vandalised cells, they also found signs that prisoners had been attempting to dig a tunnel under the prison wall.
Dos Santos said that nobody escaped from the jail during these disturbances. Nor are there reports of any injuries.
Dos Santos also told the television interviewer that the police have investigated the claim published on Friday by the weekly paper "Savana", that another of those charged with Cardoso's murder, the fugitive Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), is in hiding on the island of Ibo off the coast of the northern province of Cabo Delgado.
Police had looked into the report, he said, and could find no sign of Anibalzinho on Ibo.
