Maputo, 19 Oct (AIM) – The Mozambique Bar Association (OAM) has condemned “with deep shock and immense sadness” the murder in central Maputo on Saturday morning of prominent opposition lawyer Elvino Dias.
The OAM, describing the murder as “barbaric and cowardly”, noted that it occurred coincidentally on the 38th anniversary of the death of the country’s first president, Samora Machel, who lost his life on 19 October 1986 in a plane crash, believed to have been caused by the South African apartheid military.
The OAM statement said that Dias had always fought “to preserve the rule of law”, and his death could not be separated from his work as a lawyer.
In recent months, Dias has been the lawyer for independent presidential candidate, Venancio Mondlane, and for the main party that supported his presidential bid, Podemos. He was known to be working on the appeals against electoral fraud that Podemos intended to submit to the Constitutional Council, the country’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law.
Murdered alongside Dias was a Podemos election agent, Paulo Guambe.
“Let us have no illusions”, said the OAM. “This barbaric murder is an assault against the profession of advocacy, against its independence, against the rule of law and against democracy”.
Lawyers, the OAM urged, “should rise up against impunity, and against organized crime that has taken over institutions”.
The OAM calls for “a march of repudiation” in all the organisation’s provincial councils “in memory of this fighter for the affirmation of the free and independent practice of law”.
The OAM will accompany the investigations in an attempt to show that “crime does not pay”.
“It was an enormous honour to have had a colleague of this sort, regardless of his ideology”, the OAM stressed.
The Mais Integridade (“More Integrity”) coalition of civil society election observers also condemned the murders. It noted that Dias died instantly, but Guambe died a few hours later – and after the police had refused to allow an ambulance to assist him.
The “Mais Integridade” statement said that the police “undertook a strong exercise of censorship and intimidation of witnesses, so that they would not register the scenes of violence, including collecting and damaging several cell phones”.
The statement noted that Dias had worked with Venancio Mondlane in the internal battle within the main opposition party, Renamo, which forced the Renamo leadership to hold its overdue Congress in May (although the leadership successfully prevented Mondlane from attending the Congress).
He had also worked with Mondlane in the legal battles over the 2023 municipal elections, helping to bring cases of election fraud to the courts. Before his murder, Dias was working on the disputes arising from the accusations of fraud in the 9 October general elections.
In a note published on his Facebook page, Dias said he had become aware of a plan to assassinate both him and Mondlane – and some of that plan seems to have gone into action on Saturday morning.
The murders of Dias and Guambe, says “Mais Integridade”, are “an act of intimidation against all who are demanding transparency and truth in the 2024 elections, including the members of this consortium who have been actively denouncing electoral fraud”.
The statement calls on the authorities “to clear up this crime urgently, and ensure that those who committed it are held responsible”.
(AIM)
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