Maputo — The Mozambican police have arrested three men accused of murdering a South African citizen on 17 December.

According to Joao Machava, the spokesman for the Maputo provincial police command, the three, Carlos Manhica, Mauricio Mahumana, and Sebastiao Honwana, attacked the home of Petrus Johannes Loock, who worked at the Maragra sugar plantation some 70 kilometres north of Maputo city.

They tied Loock up, and then gagged him with sticky tape.

But the assailants wound the tape so tightly round his head that he died of asphyxiation.

They stole Loock's car, a Toyota Hilux, and took it to Maputo, where they intended to sell it for 35,000 rands (about 3,500 US dollars). They left the Makarov pistol used in the crime at the house of Rosa Mahumana, the aunt of Mauricio Mahumana. The gang then drove to Namaacha, on the border with Swaziland: but the police had been alerted to the crime and intercepted them.

Rosa Mahumana was picked up later. Machava said she initially denied all involvement, but eventually confessed to storing the gun used by her nephew.

Machava said the police has also neutralised a gang of eight highwaymen who had been ambushing vehicles on the Maputo-South Africa road, near the Ressano Garcia border post. This group had been attacking motorists since August.