Good afternoon. Law enforcement in Mozambique is in crisis after yesterday’s dramatic standoff between officers of the National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic) and the Police of the Republic of Mozambique, at the latter’s provincial headquarters in Matola. Sernic officers spent over 10 hours surrounding the building after the police refused to hand over two officers whom Sernic wanted to arrest in connection with the killing of Sernic officer João Paulo earlier this month. This was despite the fact that Sernic had obtained arrest warrants for them. In the end, according to reports, the wanted officers got away in police cars, and Sernic was left empty-handed. Reports today, however, are now saying that the officers were in fact arrested.
The full Daily Briefing continues below for Pro subscribers. Subscribers to the Zitamar News tier can read the top half, including the full leader article, here.
One of the remarkable things about this shocking incident is that no higher authority was able to successfully intervene, at least not for at least 10 hours. We do not know if the Sernic officers tried to speak to their bosses at the Attorney-General’s Office, or if the police tried to speak to the Ministry of the Interior, in order to resolve the standoff. If they did, then it did not work.
Some media commentators have suggested that Sernic does not have the authority to arrest people itself. Whether or not that is true, the fact remains that it did have warrants for the arrest of those police officers, but the police decided to act as if they were above the law, and nobody was able to convince them to behave otherwise. A more responsible police force would have executed the warrants. It is yet more ammunition for critics of the force, which already has a terrible reputation for lawlessness.
