Speaking on Tuesday at his weekly press briefing, the spokesperson for the General Command of the Mozambican police, Pedro Cossa, said that on 17 November a Tanzanian citizen, who had travelled on a Portuguese Airlines (TAP) flight from Lisbon, was detained and found to be carrying 56 capsules of cocaine in his stomach.
Cossa did not believe the drug originated from Lisbon, pointing out that in previous cases the cocaine starts its journey in Latin America.
On 20 September, an Ethiopian citizen, travelling on an Ethiopian Airways flight from Addis Ababa, was found to be carrying 3.2 kilos of cocaine in his baggage.
Two days later, a citizen from Equatorial Guinea, who also arrived on an Ethiopian Airways flight, was arrested in possession of two kilos of cocaine.
Cossa admitted that the police statistics only cover drug traffickers who are caught. It was impossible to know whether others managed to evade detection. But he hoped to reach a situation where “Mozambique is no longer used as a corridor for drug trafficking”.
He said that the police have no information on the latest kidnappings in Maputo, which occurred on Saturday. However, he announced that the police have now detained ten people in connection with threatening phone calls which may be related to the kidnappings.
In these calls, the criminal orders the victim to deposit money in his bank account, otherwise something unpleasant will happen to the victim or his family. Cossa advised anyone who receives such a call not to succumb to the extortion but to inform the police immediately of the phone numbers used by the criminals.
The ten arrests, he said, have been made in the cities of Maputo, Xai-Xai and Tete.
Cossa gave no information on deaths that occurred following last Wednesday’s municipal elections, or of the detentions of polling station monitors of the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM).
He said his report was solely on criminal activity, and matters of election security will be dealt with in a completely separate report.
Post published in: Africa News