Elvino Dias, a lawyer for presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, and Paulo Guambe, a member of Podemos, the party that supports him, were killed on Friday night in the center of Maputo by unknown individuals who shot at the car they were following.
A source from the National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic) confirmed the murder of both men today, adding that the Police of the Republic of Mozambique will comment on the case in the coming hours.
The crime took place on Avenida Joaquim Chissano, in the centre of Maputo, with sources on the ground reporting an ambush by armed men on the vehicle in which both men were travelling, after 11pm local time (one hour less in Lisbon), with several shots being fired, fatally hitting both occupants.
The Mozambican Bar Association called a press conference on the case this morning at 11am local time.
Videos of the extreme violence of the two victims and the vehicle apparently hit by more than two dozen shots circulated in Mozambique throughout the night.
Lawyer Elvino Dias, a well-known defender of human rights cases in Mozambique, was a legal advisor to Venâncio Mondlane and the Democratic Alliance Coalition (CAD), a political group that initially supported that candidate for President of the Republic of Mozambique, until his registration for the general elections of October 9 was rejected by the National Electoral Commission (CNE).
Venâncio Mondlane would later be supported in his candidacy by the Optimistic People for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos) party, whose national representative for the legislative and provincial lists, Paulo Guambe, was also in the vehicle targeted by the crime.
The general elections of October 9 included the seventh presidential elections - in which the current head of state, Filipe Nyusi, has no longer run, having reached the limit of two terms - simultaneously with the seventh legislative elections and the fourth for provincial assemblies and governors.
The CNE has 15 days after the polls close to announce the official results of the elections, which is set to be October 24. The Constitutional Council will then be responsible for announcing the results, after it has also concluded its analysis of any appeals, but there is no set deadline for this purpose.
The district and provincial election commissions have already completed the vote count for the general elections on October 9, which according to public announcements give an advantage to the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo, the ruling party) and the presidential candidate supported by the party, Daniel Chapo, with over 60% of the votes, although presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane disputes these results, citing data from the original voting minutes and notices that he has collected from all over the country.
Venâncio Mondlane assured on Thursday, in Beira, central Mozambique, that after the announcement of the results of the general elections he will appeal to the Constitutional Council, with the original voting minutes and notices.
"At this moment, we are aggregating the original notices at a national level. We are making copies, we are scanning them, so that we also have a digital record of all the material and we are sending them little by little to Maputo, to see if, after the announcement of the national results by the CNE, we are in a position to quickly present the appeal to the Constitutional Council", he said, in statements to journalists.
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