MAPUTO – As the luxury car carrying the sons of an elite businessman pulled up at their exclusive private school, an unidentified vehicle deliberately bumped into them. The children’s driver jumped out to see what had happened, and as he did, three armed men grabbed the youngest boy and fled.
This might sound like a plot to a movie, but this is what was reportedly happened to the family of the director of project development for Petromoc, Mr Tito Tezindi.
His son Rudi (9) was kidnapped two weeks ago and the kidnappers are demanding a ransom of US$1 million.
New accounts from the city state that since the boy’s abduction, in the past two weeks another three sons of prominent businessmen have been kidnapped.
This came to light after Lowvelder first reported that super-rich families from Mozambique were seeking asylum in Nelspruit and purchasing properties in the area to relocate their families.
A local estate agent had told the newspaper that there had been an influx of families relocating to the city because of its close proximity to Maputo. He said most wealthy families were now moving their wives and children to the city. The husbands do business in Maputo during the week and join their families at the weekends.
Mr Arnaldo Chefo, Maputo city police spokesman, said law enforcement believed the kidnapping syndicate had roots abroad but denied to elaborate on it.
Mozambican journalist Mr William Mapote, who has been investigating and covering the abductions, said the kidnappers had demanded ransoms ranging from US$300 000 to US$500 000.
“We had a case in which a family paid US$2 million to get a relative back alive.” He said families did not want the police involved with the exchange of money. Another source, who cannot be identified, told Lowvelder that Mozambican police apparently suspected the syndicates were tipped off by banking officials who told them who the wealthy families were.
Mapote said police had made arrests but that the masterminds behind the operations were still unknown. He also claimed that it was difficult to get victims or their families to come forward as they were threatened with their lives by the abductors if they reported the cases. “To date no one has been killed.”
He also claimed that once ransoms were paid and victims released, the families would – out of fear – not pursue the issue any further. Mapote concluded that no tourists or foreigners in Mozambique had been targeted. Yet media in this country reported on the trial of Mr Bendene Chissano (known as the “Angolan”) who was arrested for the kidnapping of Mr Ibrahim Gani, owner of the Incopal Food Processing factory.
Chissano admitted involvement in three abductions. He said in all of them, the gang always enjoyed support from members of the police. One tactic was the issuing of forged arrest warrants. The gang would show the warrants to their victims, who would then go with them in the belief that they were being taken to a police station. Only when they were inside the car did they realise that in reality they had been kidnapped.
He named those who ordered the abduction as one of his co-accused, Mr Luis Carlos Manuel da Silva, and a man he referred to only as Dudu. Asked about the possible involvement of Momad Assife Abdul Satar (“Nini”), notoriously known as one of the businessmen who had ordered the assassination of the country’s foremost investigative journalist, Mr Carlos Cardoso in 2000, Chissano replied, “I don’t know him”.
There had been considerable speculation that Satar had been organising the kidnapping from his prison cell (where he has always had easy access to mobile phones), but the Public Prosecutor’s office could not find enough evidence to charge him.
Chessano is to receive judgment and sentencing on October 30. The report also stated that the involvement of policemen in the abductions certainly helped explain why the families of the victims were reluctant to denounce the kidnappers to the police, for if they did so whatever they said would find its way back to the criminals and might have endangered the lives of the victims.
