On 14 October 2025, the Office of the Presiding Judge of the Luanda District Court denied a habeas corpus application submitted by defense counsel Hermenegildo Teotónio for street bookseller Serrote José de Oliveira “General Nila”. The ruling held that he was charged exclusively with the offence of Disruption of the Provision of Public Services, under Article 4 of the Law on Crimes of Vandalism, and with no other offence.
“General Nila” has now been detained for six months. He was shot by and officer of the Criminal Investigation Service while walking to a hospital with his siblings, before being taken into custody, as documented by Maka Angola.
On 4 December 2025, however, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional — with generally binding force — the provisions contained in Article 4 of the Law on Vandalism, among others.
In its ruling, the Court found that these provisions violated core principles of a state governed by the rule of law, including the principle of legality in criminal matters, the requirement of specificity (nullum crimen sine lege certa), and the obligation that punishable conduct be clearly and precisely defined.
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From the moment the ruling was issued, the annulled provision ceased to produce any legal effects and was expunged from the legal system with erga omnes and ex tunc effect — in relation to all persons, from the outset. No exception or limitation was established in the present case.
As a result, the sole criminal basis sustaining the detention of “General Nila” was entirely extinguished. The offence for which he had been charged ceased to exist in legal terms, and no deprivation of liberty may lawfully persist when grounded in a non-existent crime.
The continued detention of “General Nila” in these circumstances constitutes arbitrary detention under international law. Once the Constitutional Court annulled the only legal basis invoked to justify his imprisonment, any further deprivation of freedom became devoid of lawful foundation, transforming custody into an act of state coercion untethered from law.
By failing to give effect to a ruling with universally binding force, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has placed itself outside the hierarchy of lawful authority. This is neither an administrative oversight nor an exercise of prosecutorial discretion. It represents a deliberate suspension of the constitutional order by omission — an act of institutional defiance against the highest court of the land.
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Such conduct dismantles the most basic safeguards of the rule of law. When binding constitutional rulings are ignored without consequence, detention ceases to be governed by law and becomes contingent on the will of executive-aligned institutions. Freedom is no longer protected by enforceable norms, but eroded through silence, inertia, and institutional complicity.
This case therefore transcends the fate of a single detainee. It exposes a structural practice in which judicial authority is selectively enforced, constitutional review is rendered symbolic, and fundamental rights are treated as revocable privileges rather than binding guarantees.
Under these conditions, the continued detention of “General Nila” cannot be understood as an isolated illegality, but as part of a broader pattern of state conduct fundamentally incompatible with the most basic standards of legality, due process, and protection against arbitrary deprivation of freedom.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
