Three members of the Mozambican riot police went on trial on Friday in the southern city of Inhambane accused of murdering a man named Juliao Macul on 8 November 2007.The policemen are said to have mistaken Macul for Agostinho Chauque who, at the time, was the most wanted man in the country. Chauque eventually died in a shoot-out with police in Maputo last year.The three men were sent from Maputo to the Inhambane district of Massinga, after receiving reports that Chauque had been seen in a hotel there. According to a report in Saturday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Noticias”, their instructions were to check out the reports and arrest the suspect.Instead, the police decided to shoot first and ask questions later. Convinced that Macul was indeed Chauque, they burst into the room where he was resting and shot him dead. The police tried to recover from this fatal mistake by claiming that Macul was also a criminal. They alleged that Macul was involved in trafficking stolen vehicles between South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique – much to the fury of Macul’s family, who denied that their murdered relative had anything to do with such crimes.The police did not withdraw the slur. While recognising that the three riot police were wrong about the identity of the man they had killed, the police backed up their story that Macul was a dealer in stolen cars. A police statement was even circulated to the press claiming that Macul was shot after he had resisted arrest. The police even refused to share in the costs of Macul’s funeral. The family are now demanding both justice and compensation.The trial should have begun in December – but the three police did not obey the summons to appear in court. The court then ordered their arrest, and they have been awaiting the current trial in a prison cell.
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