Two police officers beaten and held hostage after 52 sacks of suruma seized in Nanhamba
Two officers of the Polícia da República de Moçambique were beaten and held hostage by villagers of Nanhamba, Mueda district, Cabo Delgado, after a raid seized 52 sacks of cannabis sativa, known as suruma, weighing about a tonne. The men accused of the attack were on the run when the reports were published.
Two policemen were severely beaten and one was taken prisoner after a drug raid
in Cabo Delgado province.[1]Police raiding homes in Nanhamba, in Mueda
district, confiscated about a tonne of cannabis, known locally as suruma, in 52
sacks.[1]The raid took place on a Friday and the ambush followed two days
later.[1]
Villagers reacted angrily to the raid and there was a shootout, which Cabo
Delgado police spokesperson Abdul Chaguro blamed on three villagers he said were
responsible for growing the cannabis.[1]The villagers beat up two policemen
and seized a police pistol; one officer escaped and the other was held in a hut
for many hours until colleagues found him alive.[1]The villagers made the
officers’ release conditional on the return of the suruma.[2]
Both officers were treated at the hospital in the provincial capital, Pemba, and
the officer who had been held prisoner was transferred to the central hospital
in Nampula province, where he was under intensive care.[1]The cannabis had
been seized by PRM officers attached to the administrative post of Ngapa.[2]Chaguro said the men responsible for the kidnapping and beating were on the run
and would be caught and held responsible.[1]Police said they were working
with local community leaders to calm villagers and pursue only those responsible
for cultivating the cannabis.[1]
Villagers said the police operation had been violent and had injured several
people, including children.[2]On the Mueda plateau the drug law is widely
disregarded because cannabis is grown as a cash crop.[1]Cannabis grows
readily in Mozambique, but possessing and smoking it are offences under national
drug legislation.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The accounts give no calendar date: the raid is described as a Friday and the ambush as the Sunday two days later, so 14 September 2014 is derived from the 17 September publication dates.
No arrests, charges or court outcome in connection with the seizure or the attack on the officers were reported.
The number of villagers injured in the raid was reported only as several people, including children, with no count published.
The cannabis was weighed only as about a tonne in 52 sacks, an official estimate, so its exact weight is unknown.
Both opened accounts come from the same 17 September 2014 dispatch, one in English and one in Portuguese, so the report rests on a single origin.
Left out, as its quotation was not found in Moçambique Terra Queimada: Much of the population of the lower Mueda plateau grows suruma as a cash crop and sees any ban on it as an affront.
Police in Govuro district, Inhambane, detained a 38-year-old transporter and seized 240 kg of cannabis packed in seven suitcases at the Save checkpoint. The PRM said the load came from South Africa and was headed for Manica province.
Mozambique's police detained five people in Tete after a dog unit found 21 kg of cannabis hidden in a long-distance truck from Maputo. The drug was packed in 33 parcels among beauty products and animal feed, and a sixth suspect fled.
Maputo police detained a man with 120 bundles of suruma weighing about 100 kg, brought from South Africa in a passenger vehicle and intercepted at the Junta Bus Terminal as he tried to dispatch the load to Tete. Terminal staff raised the alarm after the suspect left before completing shipment.
Police in Beira detained 10 people in a house in the Inhamudima area, where they were allegedly selling and using heroin and cannabis sativa, known as soruma, and seized small quantities of both drugs and an unspecified sum of cash. The alleged owner of the drug and other dealers and users fled, and a police spokesman said officers were trying to establish where the drug came from.
