A SENIOR Mozambican police officer has been sentenced to three months imprisonment for illegally detaining a journalist, state radio reported on Tuesday. Severino Charles, police commander of Chiure district in the northern Cabo Delgado province, was Tuesday found guilty of illegally detaining journalist Fernando Quinova of the state-owned Mass Communications Institute in October last year. Quinova was arrested for writing a story on the death in police hands of a man who was accused of stealing cassava from a neighbour. Quinova was detained for allegedly defaming the police. He escaped a month later and lodged a complaint with the provincial police command.