A press release, to which the Lusa agency had access, informs that Fernando Macedo, Osvaldo de Carvalho and Laura Macedo also presented the request for an investigation for evidence of the practice of the crimes of prevarication and excess of power, "which are public and notorious".
For the three citizens, the conduct of the president of the Superior Council of the Judiciary violated the Constitution of the Republic of Angola, as denounced by the Association of Judges of Angola (AJA) and the Angolan Bar Association, and fits into the types of crimes of prevarication, abuse of power and excess of power, foreseen and punishable in the Law of Public Probity and the Penal Code.
At issue is an order by the presiding judge of the Superior Council of the Judiciary that ordered the immediate burial of a citizen, allegedly deceased by covid-19, in the province of Benguela, after the District Court of that region had ordered the provisional suspension of the burial and funeral ceremony of a corpse, as well as the carrying out of an autopsy, in a decision of an unspecified injunction requested by the relatives of the deceased.
Regarding the order, the JSA issued a note of repudiation, in which it expressed concern about the order, as it considered its content to be extremely dangerous, emphasizing that the Superior Council of the Judiciary, and therefore its president, "is not a judicial body and has its powers under article 184 of the CRA.
On the evidence of the crime of prevarication, the three citizens, civic activists, maintain that having received a complaint/complaint within the framework of the current judicial process, the intervention of the president of the Superior Council of the Judiciary in the same "should have been to declare himself incompetent to decide the request made to him by the Angolan Ministry of Health, because the Constitution and the law do not give it the power to decide, as a complaint or appeal instance, on the substance of the injunction decreed, or to exercise any kind of influence within the scope of said judicial process.
With regard to the evidence of the crime of abuse of power, they consider that the president of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, "violating the powers inherent to his functions, specifically the duty to respect legality, which is to abstain from performing an act that is not within his competence," annulled the decision of the competent body, the Benguela District Court, illegitimately benefiting the party against whom the order was decreed.
With regard to the crime of excess power, the activists claim that the president of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, as a single body, by means of an administrative act, prevented and disturbed the exercise of judicial power by revoking/amending the content of an injunction granted by the Benguela District Court and by not having informed the party who presented it of a complaint, which should have previously, as required by law, filed an appeal for review of the court's decision.
The death of the Angolan citizen was reported by the health authorities as a victim of covid-19, but for doubts the relatives requested an autopsy.
In his ruling, the presiding judge of the Superior Council of the Judiciary considers that, having the wife and one of the children of the deceased tested positive, it was the understanding that the public health of an entire community living in Benguela and beyond, should not be questioned by opinions that contradict the diagnosis scientifically proven, such as the present case.
