Mozambique’s National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic) has detained a soldier suspected of killing motorcycle taxi drivers and robbing shopkeepers in Chimoyo, in the center of the country, an official source told Lusa on Thursday.
A soldier deserted on the Northern Operational Theater front line in Cabo Delgado, where Mozambican forces are fighting armed insurgents, and took with him an AK-47, four magazines and 104 rounds of ammunition – the material used to threaten his victims and has now been detained by police , explained Paulo Tapua, Sernic’s spokesman in Manica.
The soldier, the source continued, led a gang that he formed upon his arrival in Chimoio and which committed several murders, the latest case was recently reported on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Manica.
“He killed a motorcycle taxi driver in the Tambara 2 area, where he also robbed a Nigerian merchant,” Paulo Tapua said, referring to the military killing and stealing of another motorcycle taxi driver that same day.
In another incident this year, a suspect allegedly shot at a trading establishment in the Tembwe area and stole money and various goods from a local merchant.
“At the exit, they stopped the motorcycle taxi driver and took away his motorcycle, which was later seized,” a police spokesman said.
The suspect denied involvement in the killings and, in press statements at the first police station in Chimoio, admitted that the merchants had committed robberies to “survive” outside the army.
The soldier believes that the fact that he fled “from there with a gun” led to his arrest. [Cabo Delgado]”.
“I went to store the gun at my house and was later found walking around with it here in the city of Chimoio,” the suspect said.
The motorcycle taxi drivers association Chimoio estimates that 25 motorcycle taxi drivers have been killed and funds stolen in 2022, with its president, Neto Chiganda, calling the number of member deaths over the past year “frightening”.