The Brasilian missionary Maria Elilda dos Santos, who denounced alleged cases of trafficking in children and human organs in Mozambique, particularly in the northern Nampula province, left the country on Wednesday, allegedly pressed by Mozambican authorities.
As cited in Thursday's issue of the Maputo daily paper "Noticias", she said that she received a letter from the provincial governor, Abdul Razak, advising her to leave the country, but she declined to give any further details.
"I have been suffering pressure, and I cannot cope any more with such things", she said.
"Although I was forced to leave, I will never abandon this just cause", said dos Santos, adding that she will try and "draw the attention of all interveners in the process to seek the correct solution to this problem".
She also complained of a strong campaign from the Mozambican society against her, including from the media.
Dos Santos further accused the Nampula authorities of arresting innocent people in connection with the murder of another Brasilian missionary, Doraci Edinger, in her Nampula residence in March.
"Sister Doraci knew too much, and that is why they silenced her", she said, linking Edinger's murder with the alleged trafficking in children and human body parts.
Reacting to the alleged correspondence, Razak denies having ever talked to dos Santos, saying that he knows nothing of the letter in question. I never met her. I am surprised with the news that I pressed her to leave the country".
Meanwhile, Nampula provincial chief attorney Daniel Magula said that it is not because dos Santos left the country that his institution will let the case die.
"There are people in the country who can be useful besides the denouncer", he said.
He decline to give any names, saying that "we also, (the magistrates) have our own secrets, just like you, journalists".
In her denouncement, dos Santos accused a South African couple of investors, exploiting a poultry farm in Nampula, of trafficking in children and human organs.
The couple's lawyer, Marcelo Muhacha, comenting on dos Santos' departure, said that "she should be barred from leaving the country, taking into account that she is the key declarant in this case".
He was, thus, expressing his fears that the case be either shelved or delayed. "If, even with her around the case took so long, how much more with her absent?", he questioned.
But dos Santos, before her departure said that the Mozambican government may count on her cooperation in this case, "even because I am not going to the end of the world", she said.
Fonte: AIM
