According to lawyer Simão Afonso, of the 22 young people who are being tried since Monday by the Luanda District Court, five are not protesters and among them are three "death hunters", people who gather at the entrance of the greedy cemeteries in reaching the homes of people who died just for food.
The defendants are being accused of the crime of carrying out a riot and disobedience to the dispersion order, charges that the defense disputes, claiming that they had the authorization to carry out the demonstration.
Simão Afonso said that most of the protesters were detained in the Santa Ana Cemetery square, where they were "only to carry out a demonstration that was authorized".
"The police only went to the scene to detain", the lawyer told Lusa this Wednesday, recalling the difficulties and impediments to contacting his constituents after their arrest on Saturday.
The lawyer said that he only had contact with the defendants and with the respective process on the first day of the court hearing, last Monday, and the accusations, he stressed, "do not meet and do not have any support from a factual point of view".
"Until today we have heard all the deponents and the defendants and the defense's allegations have been presented, the hearing has been suspended and the decision will be dictated tomorrow", he stressed.
At least three women, namely one pregnant and another with a baby in her arms, also detained on Saturday, "but in a place far from the concentration of protesters", are involved in the process.
The lawyer, who believes in the unconditional acquittal of the defendants, reiterated that the charges are not valid, because, he stressed, the arrests of two of these women took place in different places.
The Bloco Democrático (BD) "deplores and vehemently repudiates" the arrests of the aforementioned activists and says that they were kept in "deplorable conditions in the dungeons of the Farol das Lagostas police station, contrary to the law and in flagrant violation of their citizenship rights".
The BD, in a statement made public on Monday, says that "these civic activists were arrested because they wanted to start a demonstration against Indra (the company selected to manage the electoral process) and for the release of political prisoners, on the 9th of April, despite the fact that it was convened under the terms of the Constitution and the Freedom of Manifestation Law and the competent authorities were notified in good time".
