Search Results for: SINSE

SINSE and Public Prosecutor Protect a Pedophile in Cuango

A complaint of pedophilia has been lodged with the Office of the Attorney General against the secretary of diamond-rich Cuango municipality, in the province of Lunda-Norte. The father of the victim – a girl of 13 at the time – is accusing the local public prosecutor of protecting the secretary, and the local head of the State Intelligence and Security Service (SINSE) of attempting to suppress the case. The background to the case In September of 2013, the municipal administration organized a food and drinks fair [politically known as cultural marathons throughout the country] in the town of Cuango. During the fair, one of those responsible for organizing the event, the secretary of the Cuango municipality, Cândido Daniel Sampaio,37, offered to buy ice cream for two cousins who were part of his prayer group in the Church of the Seventh Day Adventists. The ice cream vendor was a certain distance away, and Sampaio suggested that they drive there, accompanied by one of his colleagues. On the way, they took a detour and parked at the water treatment plant, […]

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Angola’s Attorney General “Sorry for Mistake” in Accusing Army Chief

Recently, the office of the Attorney General publicly named the Chief of Staff of the Angolan Armed Forces, General Geraldo Sachipengo Nunda, a formal suspect for criminal association.  More specifically, General Nunda was implicated in a US $50 billion scam led by a Thai businessman.  However, the Attorney General later apologized for the “mistake”.  The bungle has deeply troubled the Army and the judiciary, and has cast a shadow on President Lourenço’s anti-corruption drive.   When General Hélder Fernando Pitta Grós was appointed to the office of Attorney General of the Republic by Angola’s new President, João Lourenço, in December 2017, public opinion was divided. On the one hand, there was disappointment that yet again a military figure would occupy what should be a civilian position. On the other, there was optimism that, after ten years under the jackboot of the truculent and controversial Dos Santos-appointee, General João Maria de Sousa, the country’s […]

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President’s Speech Nabs Another Political Prisoner

The activist Antonio Diogo de Santana Domingos “Magno”, 38, will be spending his fifth day in preventive detention because he tried to get into the Angolan National Assembly to listen to the State of the Nation speech,  delivered on  October 15th by Vice President Manuel Vicente. Domingos Magno, as he is known, did not even manage to get within 200 meters of the National Assembly.  Maka Angola has spoken to several relatives, friends and police sources to account for what happened. The activist was detained soon after 10 am by two state security agents who had been following him.  This happened soon after he got a press pass from the company NCR, which should have allowed him into the National Assembly building. After his detention, agents accompanied by special forces from the police went to the Fourth Police Station in Maianga where he was interviewed alone by State security agents. […]

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Sharks or Crocodiles: How to Get Rid of an Activist in Angola

Since June 20, much has been said and written about the detained Angolan book club activists, accused of attempting to bring about a coup d’état.  State officials, including Attorney-General Joao Maria de Sousa and Interior Minister Angelo Tavares, have emphasised In their statements to the media that they will zealously uphold the law, make arrests or take any and all other appropriate action against those who conspire to overthrow President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s government. But their treatment of another activist, 28 year-old Mario Faustino, detained since May 27, exposes the shambolic nature of the Angolan Justice system. In an exclusive interview for Maka Angola, from his prison cell in the National Police provincial headquarters in Luanda, Mr Faustino alleges that when he was detained, he was subjected to torture at a military installation, carried out in person by a Brigadier in the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA).  According to the […]

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President José Eduardo dos Santos’ Regime is Afraid of Books

A Maka Angola reader has raised a pertinent question concerning the detention on 21 June of 13 activists who were busy discussing methods of peaceful protest against what they consider to be a dictatorship. Two more activists were detained in the following days, and all fifteen were accused of plotting a coup d’etat. Most of these activists are known for their ill-fated attempts to organize anti-government demonstrations, which have been brutally suppressed. But how is it possible, the reader asks, that people who cannot manage even the most basic protest without being violently clamped down and detained, could have the means to organize a coup d’etat? Tired, perhaps, of being the punching bag for the authorities and of being accused by a part of civil society of being disorganized, the young people decided to form a study group. They armed themselves with books on peaceful forms of protest in order […]

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Crisis, What Crisis in Angola?

As Angola’s economic crisis deepens, the country’s president has given priority to the construction of a war memorial at an estimated cost of US $72 million, and a further US $73 million going to a phantom category of “non-specific religious affairs and services”.  These projects fall under the Office of Special Works of the Presidency of the Republic. Both expenditures are part of the revised 2015 budget, passed by the National Assembly on March 20, which was slashed by 25 percent (over US $17 billion) – including cuts in the salaries of civil servants. Despite the reduction of the budget due to the fall in oil prices, the president’s  set of priorities are baffling. Oil accounts for approximately 95 percent of Angola’s total exports, and its economy is mono-dependent on this commodity. For instance, the largest state-funded religious project, the construction of the Sanctuary of Muxima for the Catholic Church, […]

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Crashing Oil Prices, Propaganda and the Angolan Recipe for Disaster

Throughout the Angolan capital, Luanda, strategically located billboards announce a country being happily stewarded through development by the government. “Building a prosperous Angola based on solidarity”, is the boastful slogan across all ads celebrating the government’s achievements in all spheres of life. One such billboard celebrates “more electricity, more development”, in spite of the regular power outages. Such a massive propaganda exercise outside the electoral period has a precedent only in the early 1970s, when the Portuguese colonial authorities desperately tried to sell the idea that their rule was making people very happy, and independence could ruin all such great achievements. Nonetheless, this propaganda is in full swing at a time when the steady drop in the oil price on international markets could be good news for the Angolan people and a bad omen for their rulers. As a major countermeasure, last December the presidency decreed a 20 percent rise […]

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How Police Commanders Brutally Assaulted Laurinda Gouveia

One National Police officer grabbed Laurinda Gouveia’s mobile phone, and another punched her in the face. They dragged her a few meters, by the hair, to a National Police vehicle. Laurinda committed the crime of treason by attempting to take part in a demonstration demanding the resignation of president José Eduardo dos Santos. What followed is her personal ordeal. Last Sunday, November 23, at around 4pm, Laurinda, a 2nd year student of Philosophy at the Catholic University, and part-time street vendor of barbecued meat, went to Independence Square in Luanda, in the company of three other activists. While her companions were trying to get to the Agostinho Neto monument, Laurinda was taking pictures from a distance. “The National Police patrol car took me to the 1st of May School [Commercial Institute of Luanda], beside the Square. Six police commanders and plain clothes SINSE  (State Security and Intelligence Service) officials surrounded […]

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From a CIA Conspiracy Theory to the Murdering of Activists

The trial regarding the 2012 killing of Angolan political activists Alves Kamulingue and Isaías Cassule, which resumed on November 18, continues today. The central question still concerns who, in the chain of command of the state and the ruling MPLA, ordered their deaths? What is known is that the two had been involved in organizing a demonstration on 27 May 2012, which was intended to involve former members of the Presidential Guard and demobilized soldiers. After negotiations with and pressure from the Presidential Intelligence Bureau, the former presidential guards pulled out of the protests. A further question is why the alleged killers of both men are being charged in a single case, although each death involved a different group of suspects. A total of seven suspects have been detained. In the Kamulingue case, two National Intelligence and State Security (SINSE) officials have been charged: António Gamboa Vieira Lopes and Paulo […]

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The MPLA’s election plan

The action plan for the electoral campaign of the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which formally starts on July 31, contains strategies that need to be made plain for all to see, in the interests of peace, political stability, and the distinction between party and state. For the first phase of the campaign, MPLA defines the need to pay special attention “critical areas to ensure order and tranquillity among voters”. To this end, MPLA envisages to “instruct activists, sympathizers and friends of the MPLA and other voters not to take part in any actions that may suggest electoral impropriety, and to refrain from practising any kind of violence against other political parties or their activists.” It also underscores the need to “denounce political parties, civil society organizations and citizens who incite voters to violence, disturbance or electoral fraud.” The communications and security committee of MPLA’s electoral […]

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