At his weekly press briefing on Tuesday, the spokesperson of the General Command of the Mozambican police, Pedro Cossa, said the poisoning happened last Wednesday, and the 14 survivors are under medical care in Nampula Provincial Hospital.
The case, as described by Cossa, bears more resemblance to witchcraft than to any recognizable form of medicine. He said that the two “doctors”, named only as Antonio and Rafael, gave their victims a toxic substance in an attempt to resolve a family dispute, and to ascertain the truth in this conflict.
Cossa likened the administration of the poison to the medieval European practice of “trial by ordeal”, whereby a suspect would be ordered, for example, to pick up a hot coal, and if he escaped with no burns, he would be declared innocent.
Apparently, those who were innocent in the obscure family quarrel would have been unharmed by the poison.
Cossa noted that trial by ordeal had been abandoned centuries ago, and what the two men had done was simply murder. The self-styled “traditional doctors” are being charged with two counts of murder and 14 counts of attempted murder.
Cossa also said that in Barue district, in the central province of Manica, the police had detained a man named Augusto Tomo, found in illegal possession of nine 60 mm mortar shells.
Cossa said that Tomo did not appear to have anything to do with the armed forces, and had probably picked up the mortar shells from an abandoned arms cache, left over from the war of destabilisation.
Drawing up a balance sheet on police activity over the previous week, Cossa said that 130 crimes had been reported, compared with 162 in the same period of 2011. 77 of the offences were classified as crimes against property, 47 as crimes against persons, and six as crimes against public order. Cossa said the police had identified those responsible in 107 of the cases.
During the week, 42 traffic accidents were reported (compared with 55 in the same period last year), in which 18 people died and 25 were seriously injured.
The traffic police inspected 21,207 vehicles, and issued 2,264 fines for various traffic offences. 85 vehicles were seized for various irregularities. Eight people were arrested for illegal driving and a further 93 have been charged with drunk driving.
Post published in: Africa News