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Activist laments health condition of former Transport Minister “without assistance for a year”

The activist “Ta Nice Neutro” said this Wednesday that the former Transport Minister, detained for four years and with whom he shared the same cell for two months, “has been without medical care for a year” and regretted the state of prisons.

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"What I saw in jail is sad. I spent almost two months in the same cell with former Transport Minister Augusto Tomás and he is from the ruling MPLA. If Augusto Tomás, who is a member of the MPLA, has been without assistance for a year doctor, was someone who was part of the MPLA, imagine you militants of this party", said activist Gilson da Silva Moreira, known as "Ta Nice Neutro".

Speaking at the Luanda District Court, where he was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence of one year and three months, he deplored the state of Angola's penitentiaries, where he spent nine months.

The activist, who said he shared the prison with former Transport Minister Augusto Tomás, detained since 21 September 2018, considered that the state of the country and the prisons will only improve when the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) ) "leave power".

"The MPLA has to get out of power", defended the activist, very interventionist in public demonstrations and on social networks, also considered a "political prisoner".

"[People] sometimes think that I am from the opposition, but I do not defend either the opposition or the ruling party, I defend the Angolan people, so to see my stance, what is happening with the Angolan people too happens to some members of the MPLA", he pointed out.

Last week, the Supreme Court denied the request for parole by former Transport Minister Augusto Tomás, considering that "the release of this type of criminals halfway through their sentence is not at all compatible with social peace".

Augusto Tomás was sentenced by the Supreme Court, in August 2019, to 14 years in prison, within the scope of the trial of the well-known case of the National Council of Shippers, a sentence that was reduced by the plenary of the Supreme Court to seven years and one month in prison.

According to the judgment presented this Wednesday by the judge of the 1st section of the Court of the District of Luanda, it was proved, in the seat of the trial hearings, that "Ta Nice Neutro" committed the crime of outrage to the State, its symbols and organs, when recording a video in which he called the President a "bandit and a clown", which he shared on social media.

The same "adjectives", said judge Daniel Ferreira, also attributed to the National Police.

At the end of the hearing in which the Public Prosecutor's Office appealed the judge's decision to the Court of Appeal, with suspensive effects, the activist, arrested on 14 January, recalled the difficult months of imprisonment.

"Nine months in jail were not easy, because our jails are not really good. I stayed in Viana [Comarca de Viana, in Luanda] for seven months and I spent two months in São Paulo [prison hospital] and it's really sad what I have seen inside the jails", he stressed.

He also regretted the health condition of a young man who said he had been in prison for seven years, with a colostomy bag (a bag for collecting feces and urine) "for not receiving proper medical care in the hospitals where he passed".

"He [the inmate] has been to Hospital Prisão São Paulo ten times, he has been to Hospital Américo Boavida and five times to Hospital Militar, but this young man has been like this for seven years and he just needs to close the wound and so far he hasn't do it," he explained.

"Ta Nice Neutro", 35 years old, also promised to "continue to fight" to improve the living conditions of Angolans and publicly apologize to the President and the National Police, as determined by the court, "under penalty of having the suspension of the his sentence", as the judge observed.

The crimes of public instigation to the crime, rebellion and resistance against an official, of which he was also accused, underlined the judge, "have not been proven".

Mitigating issues such as the defendant's age, his health condition and his being a first-time defendant also contributed, the magistrate noted, to the suspension of the sentence.

The Luanda District Court also sentenced "Ta Nice Neutro" to pay a court fee of 50,000 kwanzas.

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