The first President of the Constitutional Council, Rui Baltazar, died in the early hours of Saturday morning. The judge-councilor lost his life at the age of 91.

Full name Rui Baltazar dos Santos Alves, he was born in Maputo in 1933 and practiced law in the country from 1959 to 1974.

The former judge counselor graduated in Law from the University of Coimbra in Portugal and, in 1958, completed a Master's Degree in Political and Economic Sciences at the same university.

Nyusi mourns death

Mourning the event, the President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi, wrote on his Facebook page that Rui Baltazar was an outstanding patriot, who dedicated his entire life to the service of the Mozambican homeland.

"Even in his youth, during the colonial period, he stood out as a lawyer defending several nationalists imprisoned by PIDE-DGS," reads the publication, and then adds that after National Independence, Rui Baltazar was one of the forerunners of Mozambican Justice, having served, among others, as the first Minister of Justice and the first President of the Constitutional Council of Mozambique.