Maputo, 31 Jul (AIM) – Two Mozambican children were rescued from the clutches of people traffickers last week, according to a report on the independent television station STV.
In one case, reported on 27 July, a 21 year old man in the northern province of Nampula decided to sell his own brother “to get rich”.
He told the police and reporters that he had asked a friend what he needed to do in order to become rich. “My friend replied that there were various ways of getting rich – for example, by going to a sorcerer to kill someone and make a sacrifice”.
“I replied that I have a brother and I could sell him”, the young man continued. The unnamed friend told him he would look for “a boss” to buy the 16 year old child. He would pay 500,000 meticais (about 7,800 US dollars, at the current exchange rate) for the boy, alive or dead (which suggests that the purpose was to extract the boy’s body parts, for use in black magic rituals).
The boy told the police that his brother took him from the family house early in the morning, and asked him to accompany him to the home of a friend. Suspecting nothing, the boy agreed.
But some local community leaders understood what was happening, and when they reached the friend’s house, the boy saw the community leaders making phone calls. “Then I was taken to the police”, he recalled.
The older brother’s get-rich-quick scheme collapsed, because the trafficker mistakenly contacted an honest citizen, who, instead of purchasing the child, contacted the community leaders.
Nampula provincial police spokesperson Dercio Samuel said he had no doubt that this was a case of trafficking in human beings.
“What most concerned us”, said Samuel, “was that the suspect declared categorically that he did not care about the life of his brother. For him, what was important was the 500,000 meticais, and whether the minor was alive or dead would depend on the client”.
The second case occurred two days later in the central province of Zambezia, where a 28 year old man abducted an eight year old boy, as he was going home from school.
“He approached me and said ‘let’s go together, and I’ll give you five meticais’. But I refused”, said the boy. “He grabbed me and put me in a txopela (three wheeler taxi). I tried to shout, but he covered my mouth”.
Fortunately, police were nearby, intercepted the would-be kidnapper and released his victim.
He confessed to the police and said he decided to kidnap a child because he was unemployed and needed money. While looking for a job, he met a friend who said he knew someone who needed a child. A price for the child was negotiated, starting at a million meticais, but then falling to 700,000.
The Zambezia spokesperson for the National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic), Maximino Amilcar, said the crime was frustrated, because Sernic already had information about the would-be kidnapper, and set a trap for him.
“In one of the messages exchanged with the supposed buyer, he asked whether he wanted the child alive or dead, and this worried us”, said Amilcar. “Yesterday he contacted the supposed buyer again, and asked for 500 meticais to transport the child here in the city (the provincial capital, Quelimane). But when he arrived, our operatives were waiting and arrested him”.
(AIM)
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