Tag: SIC

The Hunter, Hunted: An Angolan General’s Hunting Lodge

Angolans call the remote southeastern province of Kuando Kubango “the end of the world” (in Portuguese: “o fim do mundo”).  Bordering Zambia, Botswana and Namibia, it’s more than a thousand kilometres inland from their country’s capital and a byword for the poverty and destruction wrought by more than 30 years of civil war. As its ruined roads, bridges and infrastructure remind us to this day, Kuando Kubango was a heavily-mined battleground; the heartland of the US-backed rebel UNITA movement, headquartered in Jamba.   With the end of the civil war in 2002, the national government did set aside funds for rebuilding.  The so-called ‘Peace Dividend’ has allowed individuals to amass huge fortunes from Angola’s reconstruction but all these years later Kuando Kubango remains largely unreconstructed, in part because of the diversion of public funds into the pockets of corrupt officials during the Administration of former President José Eduardo dos Santos. […]

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Angolan Injustice: The Case of the ‘Kidnapped’ Pastor

The reported kidnap of an elderly pastor belonging to the Church of Seventh Day Adventists in Angola made for sensational headlines. Pastor Daniel Cem alleged church leaders had ordered his abduction in November 2015 and claimed his family had to pay a ransom of 30 million Kwanzas (US $220,000 at the time) to secure his release. Pastor Cem named the Adventist Church’s regional Executive Secretary as having organized the kidnap. He then accused the President and Chief Financial Officer of defamation for passing around the church hierarchy an anonymous letter purporting to confess that the kidnap was staged by Cem’s own family to extort money from the church. After a controversial trial in December 2017, six members of the Adventist church, including the three northern region leaders, were found guilty and sentenced to between one and five years in prison. They have been bailed, pending appeal, but are confined to […]

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The Fake Assassination Attempt against Angola’s Vice-President

Why does the president of the Republic, João Lourenço, allow his government to be tarnished with fabricated accusations regarding the supposed attempted murder of his vice-president in the first months of his term? Why would the president allow the National Police and the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) to use a machete as an official torture tool? Why does the president allow the judicial system, especially SIC, to be so inhumane, specializing in forging absurd evidence and incarcerating innocents? Why does João Lourenço allow the involvement of staff members of the Security House of the Presidency in an act of torture to go unpunished? Let us turn to the facts. Five citizens, detained more than a month ago, are accused of the attempted murder of vice-president Bornito de Sousa. The accusation was concocted from a banal discussion about parking the car which the five were in. They were barbarously tortured, filmed […]

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Angola’s Death Squads

Nearly two years ago, rumors began circulating in the Angolan capital, Luanda, that police officers working for the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) were routinely rounding up suspected petty criminals and killing them. Human rights journalist Rafael Marques de Morais began an investigation, taking oral and written testimony from dozens of witnesses, family members, friends, and even from the occasional survivor. He says “Compelling testimony points to a systematic SIC death squad operation targeting young men merely suspected of undesirable or criminal behavior.” Over a period of months, a clear pattern emerged with eye-witnesses naming individual police officers who had been seen to kill victims in broad daylight and in view of members of the public.  It was alleged that specific SIC units were acting as death squads with impunity. “The SIC death squads are blamed for the summary executions of hundreds of young Angolans, without even a cursory investigation of […]

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