Crimes against humanity, exposure, and coverup
In 2011, Angolan journalist and anti-corruption activist Rafael Marques published Diamantes de Sangue: Corrupção e Tortura em Angola (Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola), an exposé alleging severe human rights violations by personnel of Teleservice, the FAA, and other private security companies protecting the operations of the diamond mining companies in the provinces of Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul. The exposé included more than five hundred reports of massacres, murders, rapes, mutilations, extortion, corpse desecration, organ removal, beatings, torture, slavery, and similar abuses.[3][6] França, de Matos, Luís Faceira, António Faceira, Neto, Lara, Mackenzie, da Silva, and Dias were all named both in the report and in a criminal complaint then filed by Marques.[9][10] In December of that year, over 18,000 people in the region, including 3,000 in the town of Cafunfo, took place in political demonstrations demanding the withdrawal of Teleservice. Teleservice withdrew in March 2012.[11]
The generals named in the report tried to press charges in 2013 in Portugal, where Diamantes de Sangue was published by Tinta da China, for defamation. The attorney general there dismissed the charges, as he felt the report was well-researched and credible.[12]
In 2015, following Marques's receipt of an international journalism award, the generals pressed twenty-four charges of defamation against him in Angola, with a potential prison time of nine years and a fine in excess of $1,200,000. He was convicted of one, and given a six-month sentence deferred by two years,[13] however Angolan authorities including Minister of the Interior Ângelo de Veiga Barros and Head of State Intelligence and Security Services Eduardo Filomeno Barber Leiro Octavio did recognize the existence of the human rights violations and material damages included in Marques's report.[14][15][16] After an open statement by over 30 jewelers and press freedom and human rights NGOs in support of Marques, the charges against him were dropped under the provision that Diamantes de Sangue was not to be reprinted.[6][12][17]
