Two police officers were sentenced to 12 years in jail for hiring out police firearms to criminals, CEOAFRICA.com gathered from Mozambique.

Celestino Cacaue and Lazaro Saene were arraigned along with 12 members of the gang who used the gun. Lazaro Saene will not serve his jail terms because he was shot dead while trying to escape from Beira central prison.

Judge Alberto Assane sentenced the leader of the gang, Joao Chico Joao, nicknamed Amonike, to 20 years imprisonment. He had led robberies of shops and homes in which the gang used an AK-47 assault rifle which Saene had obtained from the police armoury.

One of the gang, Domingis Zambo, was sentenced to 22 years imprisonment because he was found guilty of armed robbery and manslaughter. Ha was among those who stole a car from a sales stand in Beira. The getaway went horribly wrong when the car ran into a group of pedestrians, killing five of them, mostly children.

However, seven of the fourteen arraigned were freed. Some of them are Rodriques Tembe and Tomas Evaristo, who transported members of the gang. They were freed because the court accepted that they did not know that the people using their taxis were criminals.