‘Prisoners In Sacks Dropped In Sea’

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32367, 5 August 1970, Page 13

‘Prisoners In Sacks Dropped In Sea’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NAIROBI, August 4.

A witness alleged before a United Nations group in Nairobi yesterday that Portuguese authorities in Mozambique put political prisoners in weighted sacks and dropped them in the sea from planes. He claimed that others were fed to lions. The witness, Mr Henrique

Nyankale, was testifying before the ad hoc working group of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights which is touring Africa, officials said, “to interview witnesses on violations of human rights in Southern Africa.” Mr Nyankale said that he was secretary-general of the Mozambique Liberation Movement (Molimo). He told a reporter that Molimo was formed by guerrillas from Mozambique after disbandment of the Dar-es-Salaam-based Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front) to which many had belonged. Mr Nyankale told the United Nations group that Africans in Mozambique suspected of political activity were taken by the secret police and whipped with a three-tailed whip kept in salt. He said that if the police decided to kill someone they put him in a sack weighted with a lump of iron, put the sack aboard a plane and dropped the sack with the prisoner inside into the sea.

He said that another method was to push a prisoner into a cage with a lion which had been starved for three days. Mr Nyankale said that prisoners were also tortured by having finger nails pulled out with pincers, by electricity and by a wooden instrument called a “palmatoria”—used on the hands, soles and buttocks.