The Monte Tchota Killings

What happened at Monte Tchota?

During the night leading into 25 April 2016, eleven men were killed at the military detachment serving the Monte Tchota telecommunications centre near Rui Vaz, in the municipality of São Domingos. Eight were soldiers stationed there. Three were civilian technicians: one Cabo Verdean and two Spanish nationals.

The victims were found on 26 April. Authorities recovered nine rifles and ammunition from a vehicle in Praia and identified a missing soldier from the detachment as the suspect. Police captured Manuel António Silva Ribeiro—reported with the nickname Entany or Antany—in Praia on 27 April.

Eleven victims, named in the government record

The Cabo Verde government identified the soldiers as Nelson Neide de Brito, Romário Steffan Dias Lima, Marilson Adérito Delgado Fernandes, Adérito Silva Rocha, Anacleto Lopes dos Santos, José Maria Correia Ribeiro, Mário Stanick Fernandes Pereira and Wilson Ramos Mendes.

The civilian workers were Cabo Verdean national Danielson Reis Monteiro and Spanish nationals Ángelo Martínez Ruíz and David Sanchez Zamarreño. They had gone to the site for telecommunications work.

This file names the victims because the case is their history as well as a court record. It omits graphic detail and does not recreate their deaths.

Why some early reports say 26 April

Later trial, memorial and tenth-anniversary reporting places the killings on 25 April 2016, with some accounts describing the night of 24–25 April. The bodies were found and the emergency became public on 26 April. Reuters and the first government statements reported from that discovery period, creating a one-day difference in early summaries.

The emergency response and arrest

Initial government statements said there was no evidence of terrorism, an attack against the state or a connection to drug trafficking. Officials appealed for calm, kept airports open and mobilized national security forces while the suspect remained missing.

The government announced Ribeiro's capture on 27 April and placed him in police custody. It later ordered an inquiry into the operation of the detachment and approved survivor pensions for the families of the soldiers and the Cabo Verdean civilian victim.

Eleven aggravated-homicide charges

Ribeiro was tried before a panel of Cabo Verde's Military Tribunal. Contemporary Lusa and Cabo Verdean reporting described him as the admitted author of the killings. At the opening session he answered required identification questions and apologized to the country and the victims' families; the prosecution requested the maximum sentence.

Later reporting summarized the tribunal's findings as a sequence beginning after conflict within the detachment and continuing when the civilian technicians arrived. Because a public copy of the full judgment was not located during this review, this page does not add private dialogue, psychological diagnosis or details beyond the reported findings.

Conviction and the 35-year sentence

The Military Tribunal convicted Ribeiro of eleven aggravated homicides. Individual terms were combined into an aggregate sentence of 35 years in prison, then the maximum prison term available in Cabo Verde.

The court also ordered his dismissal from the Armed Forces and compensation of 11 million Cabo Verde escudos to the victims' families. The aggregate limit is important: the 35-year result was not one short sentence for all eleven deaths, but the legal combined maximum after separate homicide terms.

A final judgment, with imprisonment continuing in 2026

Cabo Verdean reporting published for the case's tenth anniversary in March 2026 described the criminal file as final and Ribeiro as still serving the 35-year term at Praia Central Prison. No later reversal, acquittal or sentence cancellation was found in the sources reviewed through 29 October 2026.

The case is therefore classified as solved / adjudicated. That label concerns criminal responsibility and the standing judgment; it does not imply that every institutional question raised by the detachment's operation was answered publicly.

Memorials and the tenth anniversary

Cabo Verde's Armed Forces created a memorial at the detachment and have held commemorations with families, military representatives and Spanish diplomatic officials. In March 2026, journalists launched a book based on two years of interviews and archival work, focusing on the lives of the victims and the continuing effect on their families.

Those later accounts support a victim-centred approach: the enduring public record is not only a conviction, but eleven families and communities living with the loss.

Case timeline

Sources and evidence boundary

Editorial status note: Sources were reviewed through 2026-10-29. The full military judgment was not publicly available in the material located, so court findings are attributed to contemporaneous and current reporting. The artwork is symbolic.