Mozambique
New Attorney-General says Mozambique's legal system is sick

Misanet.com / AIM, 13 March - Mozambican legal system is corrupted, the new Attorney-General, Joaquim Madeira, told parliament last week, giving examples of the corruption. He also gave new details of a series of ongoing cases, including the Carlos Cardoso murder, banking scandals, and drug manufacture and dealing. Madeira asked why, after the huge campaign about the assassination of Carlos Cardoso, there has been total silence about the recent (non-fatal) shooting of assistant attorney-generals, Albino Macamo. 

Joaquim Madeira last week presented the Assembly with the annual report from the Attorney-General's Office. "The Mozambican legal system is sick," Madeira said. The sickness, he said, was evident not only in the country's obsolete legal codes and procedures, but above all in the attitude and behaviour of the people who staff the system.

- What we witness today is a hair-raising absence of ethics, dedication and professionalism in the various bodies that play a role in the administration of justice, he declared.

Madeira warned that corruption in the legal system called into question the whole concept of the rule of law. "Under the rule of law, the citizen should be able to restore his rights, whenever they have been violated, no matter by whom, without having to resort to favours, influences or bribes", he said. 

- When the legal system falls into discredit, because its staff allow themselves to be ruled by the easy profit to be had from tips and bribes, then any citizen may think that it is not worth demanding the restoration of violated rights, because the violator has more money then he has, said Madeira. "In such a society, the rule of law does not exist, and cannot exist, for everything is conditional, not on law, but on influences that are foreign to law, or even contrary to law."

Mozambique was perilously close to this state. "The functioning of our legal system is not far distant from this", said Madeira. "A modus vivendi has been installed within it that is contrary to the most elementary principles of legality and justice. The known behaviour of some judges, attorneys, lawyers, prison officers, policemen and even high ranking police officers only help cement this belief and discredit our judicial system", he denounced.

Although Madeira did not go so far as to name names, he gave examples, which many people in the room certainly recognised. "When an attorney burns a case file in front of the accused and receives from him seven million meticais (390 US dollars); when a judge releases a detainee without any bail requirement because he has been paid seven million meticais; when a prison guard charges money for relatives to visit sick prisoners, or when he authorises visits at midnight by people who are not the prisoner's family, in exchange for payment; when a lawyer practices and teaches that Mozambican justice is only about money; when a director of the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC) practices extortion, abusively seizing a citizen's vehicle - when all this happens, then something is going very wrong in the bodies that administer justice", he accused.

Madeira dismissed the standard excuse for corruption, which is that wages in the legal system are too low. "Peasants don't receive any wages at all, but they deal honestly with their neighbours, even when the fury of nature takes everything they possess", he said. "Our own experience leads us to say that it is perfectly possible to be an honest professional even without fabulous salaries".

As far as Madeira was concerned, "corruption is corruption and should be fought against wherever it is, and on whatever scale it shows itself". He said he was well aware that "you can't use corrupt people to fight against corruption".

So his top priority had been to clear up his own office. He warned that anybody who actively or passively connives at corruption has no place in the Attorney-General's Office. "The administration of justice demands a vocation from all those involved", he said. "Those who do not have such a vocation cannot be recruited, and cannot remain within its ranks."

One of Madeira's first decision, on taking office in mid-2000, was to order inspections of the provincial attorneys' offices. This had led to a major shake-up, with disciplinary and criminal proceedings started against some attorneys, and the demotion of others.

Madeira also made a scathing attack on police detention practices. When members of his office inspected police cells, they found "arbitrary detentions of citizens, imprisonments that are illegal because they do not observe the legal formalities, citizens detained for matters of a merely civil nature, detentions without any case files, and preventive detentions that have long exceeded their time limit."

This, he stressed, was on assault on the citizens' rights guaranteed under the Mozambican constitution. In these cases, legality had been restored - Madeira's office had ordered the immediate release of all those who were held illegally. It had also made an effort to clean up the often filthy jails. Attorneys, in coordination with the health authorities, had ordered the fumigation of jails in Namaacha, Boane and Moamba in Maputo province which were infested with cockroaches, lice and other vermin.

This was the first session of the Assembly this month which did not suffer any disruption by deputies of the former rebel movement Renamo. Whereas in the previous three sessions Renamo had made such a racket, by banging on the tables and blowing whistles and hooters, that it was virtually impossible to hear speakers, this time they listened quietly. They even applauded occasionally - particularly when Madeira called for the Criminal Investigation Police to be removed from the control of the Ministry of the Interior and put exclusively under his office.

Madeira also stressed the rise in violent crime, and said "for a handful of dollars, rands or meticais, attempts are made against the lives of peaceful citizens, audacious journalists, and honest and zealous magistrates. These are actions ordered by wealthy people, but whose hands are dripping with blood and crime."

Not only murders, but also "kidnappings, rapes with refinements of cruelty and evil, and robberies, are all creating a climate of insecurity, fear and uncertainty", said Madeira. "The criminals inculcate this climate into our society without an adequate response from the authorities".

He was also annoyed that society regarded some murders or attempted murders as worse than others. The public outcry from civil society at the murder on 22 November of Mozambique's best known journalist, Carlos Cardoso, was entirely justified, said Madeira - but why had the same civil society remained virtually silent when an attempt was made, on 15 February, to gun down one of the assistant attorney-generals, Albino Macamo?

- Criminals cannot continue to act with impunity, dictating their own laws of terror and instability to society, declared Madeira. "And society must understand that human dignity requires the defence and protection of every person, regardless of their status."

To win the battle against crime it was not enough to ensure that the police have adequate equipment. Above all it was necessary to purge the police force "of its apathetic and irresponsible members, and those who are linked with crime", he insisted. "It is not possible to combat crime with policemen who are allies of the underworld or who derive benefits from it."

Madeira also summed up the current state of the most well-known cases that his office is prosecuting. Thus as regards the murder of Carlos Cardoso, he confirmed that charges are being drawn up against the alleged assassins.

As for the country's largest bank fraud, the theft of 144 billion meticais (equivalent to 14 million US dollars at the exchange rate of the time) from the Commercial Bank of Mozambique (BCM) on the eve of its privatisation in 1996, there are renewed hopes that this may finally come to trial.

Source: Open University

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