CELL PHONES GO DEAD NEAR TOP SECURITY PRISON

Users of mobile phones living in the vicinity of the Maputo top security prison have complained that for the past three months they have been unable to make or receive calls, reports the independent television station, STV.Reporters went to the area and confirmed that it was impossible to make calls. Residents said that, in order to make use of their phones, they have to walk into other neighbourhoods, at considerable inconvenience.The general belief among the residents is that they are victims of deliberate electronic interference by the prison authorities intended to stop inmates at the prison from using phones. People living in the Machava neighbourhood are thus collateral damage in attempts to prevent dangerous criminals from communicating with the outside world.Prison guards have repeatedly confiscated cell phones which are smuggled in to prisoners, usually by members of their families. But men such as the notorious assassin Momade Assif Abdul Satar (“Nini”), one of the men who ordered the murder of the country’s foremost investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso, in 2000, have continued to use phones. It is suspected that Satar has used these communications to commit further crimes, and the General Commander of the police, Jorge Khalau, even accused him of masterminding the wave of kidnappings that has struck Mozambican cities since late 2011.One of the Machava residents who is now unable to use his phone, Jaime Antonio, made the reasonable suggestion to STV that the authorities should be more rigorous in denying prisoners the use of phones. “They should take the mobile phones away from the prisoners, rather than cutting us all off from the network”, he said.The three mobile phone operators contacted the regulatory body, the National Communications Institute (INCM), and asked it to solve the problem of lack of cell phone coverage in the vicinity of the prison.INCM director Americo Muchanga told STV that the source of interference in cell phone signals “has not been identified.”“We are working to find the source that is causing the problems and solve them”, he said. He declined to make the obvious connection between blocking prisoners’ communications, and what was happening to people who happen to live near the prison.There are similar problems around other jails. People living near the women’s prison at Ndlavela, in the city of Matola, say that they too have not been able to make phone calls for more than three months.