The number of people who died as a result of confrontations between guards and inmates after the escape from two prisons in Maputo has risen to 35, the National Penitentiary Service of Mozambique (Sernap) announced today.
According to data from the Mozambican authorities sent to Lusa, the number of recaptured inmates also rose to 332 out of a total of 1,534 who escaped from the prisons in the Mozambican capital at the end of 2024.
The inmates escaped from the Special Penitentiary of Maximum Security and Provincial of Maputo, located more than 14 kilometres from the centre of the Mozambican capital, on 25 December, and were recaptured as a result of joint operations between Sernap and the Defence and Security Forces, the agency said.
The Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CDD), a Mozambican non-governmental organization (NGO), filed a complaint with the Attorney General's Office (PGR) on January 6 against the Ministries of the Interior and Justice for the "massacre" of prisoners, who were "murdered by police bullets," according to the director of the CDD, Adriano Nuvunga.
In a live broadcast on the social network Facebook, Venâncio Mondlane, the presidential candidate who is leading the challenge to the election results from abroad, rejected the theory that the protesters who are contesting the results of the general elections of October 9 were involved, as put forward by the police, accusing the authorities of having deliberately let the prisoners escape, with the aim of manipulating the masses and diverting society's attention.
"It was all deliberate. These are mass manipulation techniques in the style of the Soviet secret services (...) so that people stop talking about electoral fraud. They want to divert our focus," said Mondlane, also accusing the authorities of having "sacrificed" some of the inmates.
Mozambique has been going through a post-electoral crisis since October, with protests and strikes that have culminated in violent clashes between police and demonstrators, who reject the results of the October 9 elections, with almost 300 dead and nearly 600 people injured by gunshots, according to civil society organizations following the process.
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