The main surprise in the Attorney General’s annual report to parliament last week was not he said during the three-hour speech, but in the question and answer session with the parliamentarians, when Américo Letela revealed that the death of lawyer Elvino Dias may have had other motivations, and not in any way related to what was widely suspected.
In the company of Paulo Guambe, the polling agent for the Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), Dias met his death in the early hours of 19 October 2024, as he left a place of entertainment in the Malhangalene neighborhood, in the center of Maputo city. The two were gunned down with 25 bullets from an automatic rifle, leaving them with no chance of survival.
The context at the time, marked, as always, by suspicions of fraud in the 9 October elections, led many to suspect that the double murder had been orchestrated by elements linked to the death squads that operate within the police, and that it was meant to silence potential figures who could be able to produce alternative electoral results to the official ones.
It was not, nor would it be, the first time that citizens have been murdered due to electoral issues. Already on the eve of the 2019 general elections, Anastácio Matavele, a civil society and independent election observation activist, had been killed by elements of the same death squads in Xai-Xai City, Gaza Province. The assassins, to their misfortune, were involved in a car accident as they tried to exit the crime scene, leading to them being positively identified as police officers who had left their local command post with their service weapons, just prior to the operation.
Not out of his own initiative, but in the parliamentarians’ question session, did Letela reveal that in relation to the case of the death of Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, the Public Prosecutor’s Office had opened a criminal case currently in the preparatory instruction phase “with several lines of investigation and diligence pertinent to the identification of those involved”.
He indicated, so far, the hearing of three suspects, two of whom were then inmates “in the Maputo Preventive Penitentiary Establishment”. Recognizing the complexity of the investigation, given the preceding circumstances, Letela revealed the involvement of Elvino Dias in a crime of falsifying the death certificate of Edite António d’Compta Cylindo, alleged partner of the late Nini Satar, who was a defendant in an abduction case.
As a defendant, Elvino Dias had been collaborating with the authorities, and according to Letela, the trial of the case “was scheduled for 20 October 2024, that is, on the Monday immediately after his death (…)”
There is an error on the date here, as the Monday after the murder would be 21 October. Apparently, it’s something that can pass for a simple typing slip. However, considering the solemnity of the occasion, as well as the fact that it is data extracted from an ongoing judicial process, the error becomes largely inexcusable.
The explanation itself raises more questions than it offers answers. The existence of a trial with a scheduled date presupposes the presence of a timely indictment, and, therefore, the end of that stage when the case would be under judicial secrecy.
There are several cases that reach the trial stage without ever having been previously publicized. This could be one of them. But there is at least one more issue to be clarified; Elvino Dias may have undertaken the preparatory work to obtain the alleged death certificate at the behest of his client, but he did not have the authority to issue such an official document, an act that in itself must be preceded by a set of essential protocols, the most fundamental of which, the existence of a dead body.
Where is the death certificate, and who issued it and with what elements of proof of the subject’s death, are pertinent questions for a better clarification. In any case, this is a process that involves two dead, namely Elvino Dias and Nini Satar, in addition to Edite Cylindo, the subject of a false death certificate, who is on the run. It may be a process that is as dead as all its subjects.
The death of Elvino Dias and his traveling companion, Paulo Guambe, almost brought this country to the brink. For an institution of the caliber of the AG, the availability of this information did not have to wait for the misplaced question of a distracted parliamentarian, who may have wanted nothing more than to simply embarrass the only guardian of legality that the country has. It was not an optional act, but a professional obligation.
In a country where the Right to Information Law imposes the obligation to proactively share information of public interest in the custody of public entities, perhaps it would be legitimate to question whether there is not a case of omission of duty on the part of the Honorable Attorney General of the Republic, who this time presented his second annual report to the Assembly of the Republic.