The woman, alone and naked, is surprised by several uniformed men who are circulating on a road. The video shows the lashes inflicted on the surprised victim and, subsequently, the bursts of the automatic weapons that end his life.
The recording was made by the attackers themselves in the Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado, in the north of the country, according to geolocation analysis. For three years, the northern territory of the former Portuguese colony has suffered an insurrection of a jihadist nature.
The act, of extreme cruelty, reveals the climate of extreme violence that the region suffers, where 1,500 people have died and 250,000 have been displaced since the conflict began.
The presumed soldiers continue to mow down his fallen body on the asphalt. The images end with an allusion by one of those present to the radical condition of the native saying that she is an ‘al shabaab’.
The crime has been described as “horrifying” in a statement released by the Ministry of Defense, which has requested an investigation to clarify the identity of the perpetrators, something that does not seem particularly complicated because they show their faces in the foreground and wear military clothing .
Human rights violations in the area have been repeatedly denounced by Amnesty International, which already showed videos of torture by the Army in May.
The military spokesmen have denounced the manipulation by the insurgents, to whom they attribute smear campaigns in the media. The Government obstructs information from the conflict area and has even imprisoned journalists who were covering the conflict.
The Muslim-majority northern Mozambique suffers from higher rates of poverty and unemployment than the rest of the country. The events encourage disturbing similarities with the advent of the insurrection in Nigeria.
The local Ansar al-Sunna militia has been anti-Christian and anti-Western and seeks an Islamization of society by force of arms, a claim answered by the displacement of troops. The extremists are known as ‘al shabaab’, but they have no ties to the Somali guerrillas, and acquired a certain international profile after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.
The existence of rich offshore gas fields further complicates the circumstances of the dispute. The extraction projects, carried out by French and North American companies, have resulted in the militarization of the coast and the arrival of mercenaries paid by the companies. But this has not deterred the rebels, who have even increased the ambition of their attacks.
