Prisoners detained for years on minor charges accuse the police of using violence to extract false confessions. Maka Angola reports

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

One Friday night in Angola’s capital 24-year-old Domingos Manuel Filipe Catete had had a few too many drinks and passed out in a stranger’s minivan. When the owner discovered him, he was taken to the local police station and arrested.

Catete had come to Luanda in search of work, but now aged 32 he is still being held in the city’s central prison after eight years without trial under a “preventive detention” order.

Though Angola’s punitive justice system came under intense scrutiny since popular rapper Luaty Beirao was jailed along with 16 other young activists last month for “plotting a rebellion” against president José Eduardo dos Santos, little is known about the men and women held indefinitely without charge.

Deprose Muchena, director of Amnesty International, has said the Angolan authorities increasingly “use the criminal justice system to silence dissenting views”, while Human Rights Watch has accused local police of using harassment, intimidation and pervasive surveillance to keep citizens in check.



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Catete’s story is a common one for those held under the detention order: almost all have been detained for more than six years without charge, and are usually from out of town.

“I was drunk and there was a car with an open door parked in front of me... so I got in and went to sleep,” he explains. The next morning, the owner “drove me straight to the police station where he accused me of stealing a CD case full of music.”

Hungover, Catete protested: “How could I have stolen anything from the car when I was still fast asleep?”



Catete then claims that officers attached to the bureau of criminal investigation beat him until he confessed. “To this day, I bear the scars across my forehead and right arm.”

He was then put in a cell and says he was only formally questioned five years later in 2013. It took another two years until he was questioned by another prosecutor.

“He asked me to explain what had happened. I did, and I’ve heard nothing since,” he says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 17 Angolans activists were accused of preparing acts of rebellion in Luanda. Photograph: Paulo Juliao/EPA

Police abuse

“Preventive detention, even with extensions, should last no more than 210 days and be reserved for crimes against state security,” explains Godinho Cristóvão, a spokesman for national human rights group the Association for Justice, Peace and Democracy (AJPD).

“By that time, if there is insufficient evidence to prosecute the charge, the suspect should be released.”

Detention without charge lasting six, seven or even eight years is illegal, he adds, “and an extraordinary abuse of process. It’s actually scandalous. Horrifying.”

Even if a prisoner is legitimately found guilty of damage to property or trespass, the maximum punishment should not exceed a two-year prison term according to national law.

But this has not been the case for men like Catete. Many men held in detention speak of experiencing physical abuse at the hands of police and criminal investigation officers, often to extract false confessions.

João Domingos da Rocha, a 26-year-old who spent seven years in preventive detention on suspicion of having stolen second-hand clothing, says he was attacked to produce a confession, while Justino Longia, accused of a similar crime, spent five years in jail and was also forced to falsely confess. Both were set free, but only after their cases made national headlines.

Nelson de Assunção Manuel, 26, has been held for four years and eight months in preventive detention. He too claims that the police used violence to extract his confession.

Manuel, who is still incarcerated, explained what happened: “It was 8am and we were preparing the materials for a house we were building in [the] Kapolo neighbourhood, when suddenly a small boy appeared with a police unit. He pointed at us and said we were thieves.”

Manuel was with six other workers who were all taken into custody. “We were set up on by several policemen who beat us with hosepipes and iron bars and forced us to say that we [had been] armed,” he explains.

“They broke my left arm with an iron bar and to this day I have difficulties because I never received any medical treatment.”

According to Manuel, who also has no relatives in Luanda, the group was only questioned for the first time in 2013, then again last year in 2015. There have been no further development in their cases.

Physical abuse and torture are prohibited under the terms of the Angolan constitution and “in cases where the law is clearly being breached – because the term of preventive detention has exceeded the limit, or because of the use of violence to extract a confession – the law has a provision for the public prosecution to free the detainees,” says Rui Verde, a legal analyst.

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“Failure to do so is a failure to comply with the law, and a violation of fundamental human rights,” he adds.

A police spokesperson said they would look into both of the ongoing cases but declined to give an official comment.

According to Verde, a public prosecutor who holds suspects in preventive detention beyond the limit could also face prosecution in both the criminal and civil courts for damages.

With regard to allegations about police violence, Verde explained that the “ultimate responsibility lies with the Interior Minister who should be called upon to resign if nothing is done to put an end to such abuse.”

“The law must be observed, and must be seen to be observed, by all.”

A version of this article first appeared on Maka Angola