Maputo - Mozambican lawyer Gilles Cistac, who has said opposition calls for decentralisation of power were backed by law, was shot dead in the capital on Tuesday, police said.
Cistac, 54 and of French origin, was in a taxi on his way to work when a car carrying four men pulled up alongside the cab and one gunmen shot him several times, police spokesperson Orlando Modumane said.
The lawyer was a central figure in a debate about the creation of autonomous states in Mozambique, a country that has attracted billions of dollars of foreign investment in recent years after making huge coal and gas finds.