The officers charged are the former Inhambane riot police commander Amade Assane, former PIC director Tomas Troveja, former chief of riot police logistics and finances Zeferino Zandamela, and policeman Gildo Guiamba.
The prosecution accuses them of pilfering over two and half tonnes of hashish from the warehouse where the drug was stored after being washed ashore on the coast of Inhambane province from a shipwreck in 2000.
All four defendants, reports Wednesday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", have told the Inhambane Provincial Court that they had nothing to do with the disappearance of the drug, and suggested it had been removed on the day that somebody had broken into one of the windows.
But criminal investigation experts Juliao Cumbane and Joaquim Nascimento (who have 23 and 25 years experience respectively) said this was impossible. The hashish had been stored in large and very heavy sacks, which could not have been manoeuvred through a window, particularly since that window was high above the floor of the warehouse.
The defendants had also denied that as much as two and a half tonnes were missing. This figure comes from weighing the hashish, first when it entered the warehouse (when the figure was 15 tonnes, 542 kilos and 600 grams), and after the alleged theft (when the drug only weighed 12 tonnes, 855 kilos and 400 grams).
The defence says this is simply because on the first occasion the hashish was wet, having recently been taken from the sea, and by the second weighing the drug had dried out.
Cumbane and Nascimento denied this claim. They pointed out that the drug taken from the waters was in tins. It had never been soaked, and had thus never absorbed water.
"When we went into the warehouse to carry out the second weighing, the first thing that struck me was that the arrangement was different from when we had stored the drug, which led us to believe that someone had removed some packages", said Nascimento.
Also on Tuesday, the former Inhambane provincial police commander, Luis Magueza, said he had ordered that the hashish be stored in the warehouse belonging to the riot police, because he thought this was the safest possible place.
The riot police were an elite unit, which should have been able to guard the drugs. One of the keys to the two padlocks on the warehouse door was entrusted to riot police commander Amade Assane, and the other top PIC director Tomas Troveja. At the time both were trusted officers.
Magueza said he had ordered this security arrangement because he was not happy with the simple posting of men on the door. He ordered the padlocks as an additional measure, "but this security scheme leaked, and the dug disappeared bit by bit".
SOURCE: AIM
