Ibraimo Abú Mbaruco, a reporter and news presenter for Palma Community Radio went missing on April 7, 2020, in Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado, where the government has been fighting an insurgency since 2017.
Mbaruco was last seen leaving his office at about 6 p.m. and soon thereafter sent a text message to a colleague saying he was “surrounded by soldiers.”
Fernando Gonçalves, president of the Media Institute of South Africa’s (MISA) Mozambique chapter, told CPJ in April 2020 that a police officer told him, on condition of anonymity, that soldiers took Mbaruco for interrogation in Mueda, a city about 300 kilometers (186 miles) away. CPJ could not independently verify that claim.
Gonçalves added that the military had no authority to detain civilians, and Mozambican laws did not allow for arrests without a warrant.
Several residents also went missing on the same day, and were believed to have been abducted by security forces, according to privately owned Zitamar News.
Mbaruco also worked as a human rights advocate and with Sekelekani a local civil society organization that trains citizen journalists, it added.
In June 2020, a MISA team travelled to the provincial capital, Pemba, to conduct a fact-finding mission and interview Mbaruco’s family, who said they repeatedly phoned him following his disappearance but no one answered. In the days after he went missing, Mbaruco’s colleagues also called and texted his phone, but he did not reply, MISA said.
MISA said it forwarded this information to the National Criminal Investigation Service.
The journalist’s brother, Juma Abú Mbaruco, told CPJ he reported the journalist’s disappearance to local police and the provincial prosecutor’s office in April 2020, but the family had not received any information about the journalist’s whereabouts, and did not know if he was still alive.
In April 2020, CPJ joined 16 other civil society groups wrote to Mozambican President Filipe Jacinto Nyusi expressing concern about the deteriorating human rights situation in Cabo Delgado and asked for Mozambican authorities to “promptly, thoroughly and effectively” investigate Mbaruco’s disappearance.
In November 2020, MISA’s Gonçalves told CPJ, “Not only has the government failed in its duty to protect its own citizens, it has shown absolutely no interest in investigating this case.”
In February 2021, Cabo Delgado’s chief prosecutor, Octávio Zilo, told CPJ that authorities had taken the matter of Mbaruco’s disappearance with “great responsibility and seriousness.” He said, via messaging app, that his office was directing an investigation by the National Criminal Investigation Service but it was progressing slowly due to terrorist attacks in the north of Cabo Delgado.
On August 14, 2023, Ângelo Paunde, national director of the statutory Human Rights and Citizenship agency, told CPJ that Mbaruco’s case was under investigation in Cabo Delgado.
In July 2024, Cabo Delgado prosecutors suspended investigations into the case due to lack of evidence.
In March 2025, CPJ wrote to President Daniel Francisco Chapo urging him to act swiftly in providing the whereabouts of Mbaruco and freelance journalist Arlindo Chissale, who also went missing in Cabo Delgado on January 7, 2015, after being taken from a bus by men in military uniform.
On Palma Community Radio’s Facebook page, the outlet covers local security and business issues and is generally supportive of the province’s government. The broadcaster is part of a network of state-run radio stations, Zitamar News said.
CPJ’s 2021 text messages to Rafael Shikani, a special advisor to the Ministry of Interior and Teofilo Nhampossa, the ministry's spokesperson, requesting comment did not receive any replies.