TWO KIDNAPPERS SENTENCED TO 23 YEARS

The Maputo City Court on Friday sentenced two people to jail terms of 23 years for their part in the kidnapping in April of a British woman (who was not named in the media reports of the trial).One of the kidnappers, Celio Mazuze, is a jurist who, up until his arrest, worked in the Ministry of Justice. His accomplice, Nilson Delalande, is already serving a 24 year sentence for murder.According to the report in Monday’s issue of the independent daily “O Pais”, the court found that Mazuze, convinced that the victim was very rich, worked with a man named Soares Tsucane, to plan the abduction. Tsucane is an escapee from the Maputo top security jail, and a former cellmate of Delalande. He persuaded Delalande to make phone calls from prison to the victim’s family demanding a ransom of a million US dollars.

Mazuze acquired the vehicle used in the kidnapping, a Toyota Conquest, and passed it on to Tsucane who was to drive it. Phone company records show regular contacts between Mazuze and Tsucane between 4 April and the day of the kidnapping, 18 April.The abduction was brutal – the victim was shot and dragged into the car, which was then driven to Marracuene, about 30 kilometres north of Maputo. There the kidnappers set the car on fire. But they bungled this attempt to destroy evidence, since three days later the police were able to find traces of the victim’s blood and one of her shoes inside the car.Nine months have passed since the crime, and the victim has not reappeared. The court feared that she is no longer alive. She was over 60 years old, and was known to have a heart condition. She lost a lot of blood when she was shot – and the fact that the kidnappers stopped demanding a ransom was, in the court’s view, an ominous indication that the woman may have died.Tsucane was not in the dock. He is still a fugitive and his whereabouts are unknown. A third accused, Rui Pale, was acquitted for lack of evidence.The reading of the sentence was disrupted by one of Mazuze’s relatives who shouted “This is a lie, it’s not true, we proved it here”. The police were obliged to intervene and remove the protestor from the courtroom.