This might be lengthy so bare with me - long story short it, we suspect cannabis was planted on us (2x f28) and I believe I very nearly ended up spending the night in a cell.
We are two white female travellers, who arrived in Tofo yesterday. We met two other white female travellers at the hostel, one living here and the other who travels back and forth for work - they insisted that the beach bars and Moz in general is safe in their experiences.
We headed down to a bar on the beach, it was quite a dark walk and not well lit at all. Once the night came to a natural end at around 11pm for us, as we’d decided to take it easy, we got ready to leave. A local m29 said he could walk us up the dark point of the hill, his English was good and he seemed trustworthy (this may have been the first mistake!). On our way we passed a police station and were summoned over. A local guy we had seen earlier that night was being searched, we were aware this guy had been smoking cannabis.
My friend, call her Alice, and the local guy, let’s call him Gus were both searched and nothing was found. At one point they took Gus into a separate room but we could still hear them/vaguely see them (they were obviously speaking Portuguese, which we don’t speak). I then offer my bag to be searched, knowing I don’t have anything on me. I empty it out and there is nothing until an officer points to a tiny piece of plant matter and asks what it is. I say I have no idea and he picks it up, passes it to Gus and Gus smells it and confirms it’s cannabis. Genuinely this piece of plant could have come from my bag but I don’t smoke a all.
My friend and I don’t smoke but honestly this looked like a piece of plant and smelled of nothing. Gus looked genuinely distressed at this point and said we could be in big trouble. Alice and I stay calm, in my head I’m assuming they want money. I’m not used to encounters with the police, especially not in Africa. Gus translates and it seems they want my name, signature and passport. Alice and I had left our passports in the the hostel and only had about $10 in cash on us (second mistake).
There is a back and forth for a while, we ask directly if they want money and that we are willing to pay (possibly the third mistake?). They insist that they don’t want money, and ‘this isn’t about money’. There seems to be no way out. They want me to get my passport and bring back the owner of the hostel so they can ‘take responsibility’ - I don’t even know who the owner is and don’t wanna drag them into it. They then say we need to sign something, which again I refuse to do. After approx 2 hours; I call the British Embassy. This seems to escalate things and Gus says now we have done that, the police won’t help us.
The Embassy are fairly helpful, tell me not to sign anything or relinquish any docs. The consular officer speaks to the police, who say Gus is known for trafficking and drugs crimes and I’m not cooperating, so will need to go to Court. I then speaks to the Embassy and they say they are going to email solicitors but will need to comply and stay in a cell until the Court date (2 days later), as this is what the police are saying. It’s me and 5 male officers and they say Alice can’t stay. At this point, I start crying and hyperventilating. Alice stays calm and tries to reason with them.
They agree a deal where I hand in my passport, to collect from the big boss 2 days later to not stay in a cell. I speak to Alice alone and she says to get along well it. I’m nervous; as this is against what the Embassy advised. They say one of us can get the passport but the other must say and then get guy out and start loading them. At this point, I totally freak out and start crying. They agree to put the guns away and drive us both to the hotel to collect my passport. Maybe at this point they felt bad.
With a stroke of luck, when we get to the hostel, Alice runs into a couple with a baby as she goes to collect my passport. The guy is white Ozzie but they live In Zimbabwe. He pretends he is a diplomat and says wants to speak to the boss alone (turns out during the chat he paid him $50). They then agree to let me go, if I call the Embassy on speaker, which they record to say it was a ‘misunderstanding’. The guy we met has a pretend call with the Ambassador. They want a photo of my passport but I refuse and we settle on me giving my full name, passport number and parents names.
Can they do anything with my details? I’m assuming it was obviously a set up, could Gus possibly be on it?
I’ve heard lots about bribes but nothing drug related. Anyone experienced similar? This went on for over 5 hours and they only got $50, why not just accept money at the start?
Submitted October 04, 2022 at 07:03AM by Silver_Inspector_194 https://ift.tt/Fc7w4Oj
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