Good afternoon. The government’s decision to make the Attorney-General’s Office responsible for overseeing the criminal investigation police (whose name is to change from Sernic to the Judicial Police; see below) is far more than an administrative reshuffle. It is another welcome step which seeks to break the power of the networks of criminality and corruption that run through Mozambican law and order.
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Fungai Caetano
Tom Bowker
Until now, Sernic has been under control of the Ministry of the Interior and of the Mozambican police command. As such, its investigative work has been subject to interference by police commanders with corrupt and malicious purposes. A particularly shocking example of this was during the protests in the wake of last year’s disputed election results, when police chiefs ordered plain clothes Sernic officers onto the streets to shoot protesters with automatic rifles. More generally, Sernic regularly finds itself caught between the interests of police, who often want to pin a charge on an innocent person, and prosecutors, who demand to see evidence. Not that prosecutors are necessarily free from corruption, but they are not as tainted as the police force.
