Five police officers of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM), suspected of torturing a couple who allegedly stole various materials, were arrested at the request of the prosecutor’s office.
The court-ordered arrest took place on Friday and prosecutors’ request was based on fears of escape and disruption by agents, according to a source connected with the case.
On Thursday, Mozambique’s Ministry of Justice confirmed that it had opened a criminal case against five PRM agents from the Homoín district of Inhambane province in southern Mozambique on suspicion of torturing a couple.
“We are already on the ground, we already have the process, we have already presented them as defendants and we believe that very soon we will have other news,” said Pompilio Xavier, a prosecutor at the Inhambane Provincial Prosecutor’s Office. .
The alleged torture to extract a confession took place in May and was made public through a video that circulated on social media for several days, leading to media coverage of the case and the start of the process.
Pompilio Xavier clarified that a medical examination of the man concluded that, among other injuries, the victim had a fracture of his left leg, and the video also shows several brutal attacks on the woman.
Prosecutors criticized the “brutality of the attacks” as the couple went from being accused of theft to being targeted by police.
“All the evidence that is collected through detective work, this evidence is invalid, it has no procedural value,” explained Pompilio Xavier.
“It was therefore an unusual, disproportionate, unnecessary act that brings shame to us all. We do not agree with them and want to give the public a guarantee that in this particular case we will go within the limits of the law, taking into account their due criminal liability for the actions they committed,” the judge added.
The FRM’s Inhambane provincial commander, Feliciano Chongo, also ensured that the actions of these agents were not in accordance with the instructions of the police command and that the persons against whom they were directed had already been heard in disciplinary proceedings.
“And this procedure will lead, in addition to their own removal, to measures that could lead to expulsion,” Feliciano Chongo told reporters.