The Minister of Justice, Constitutional and Religious Affairs, Mateus Saize, said today in Maputo that malicious people were releasing prisoners throughout the country.

For Saize, it's actually people who, under the guise of protesters, climb into prisons to remove "their cronies".

"We have the figures [of recovered prisoners], but every day we have cases of protesters who always run to the penitentiaries so they can get their cronies out. At the moment, these aren't prison escapes. They are malicious people posing as protesters who go to the prisons to free these people.... The movement to get people out of jail is big at national level," he said.

According to the Minister, there are reports from the authorities that some inmates who escaped from prisons have been recovered, and others have even chosen to turn themselves in because their sentences were about to expire.

"Intense work is being done by the relevant institutions to recover those who are still at large and return them to prisons so that they can answer for the acts they have committed," he said, as quoted by STV.