Mozambique: Cardoso Murder: Anibalzinho Changes His Story

Maputo Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), the man who led the death squad that assassinated Mozambique's top investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso, in November 2000, has once again changed his story - this time to incriminate businessman Nyimpine Chissano, the son of the country's former president, Joaquim Chissano.

According to a report in Friday's issue of the independent newsheet "Mediafax", it was Anibalzinho's denunciation of Chissano Jr that led the public prosecutor's office to file a provisional charge sheet against him with the Maputo City Court.

"Mediafax" cites "reliable sources" (but anonymous ones) as revealing that about a fortnight ago Anibalzinho was interrogated by Fernando Cananda, the Maputo City attorney in charge of the second case file on the Cardoso murder, in which Chissano is named as a suspect.
During this meeting, claimed the paper's source, Anibalzinho admitted that he had lied during his own trial in December, when he claimed that Nyimpine Chissano had nothing to do with the murder.

At the trial Anibalzinho repeatedly insisted that the masterminds behind the murder were former bank manager Vicente Ramaya, and the brothers Nini and Ayob Abdul Satar - and nobody else.

At the first murder trial, held from November 2002 to January 2003, the Satars and Ramaya were found guilty of ordering Cardoso's murder. Their motive, the prosecution successfully argued, was Cardoso's investigation into a huge fraud at Ramaya's branch of the Commercial Bank of Mozambique, from which members of the Abdul Satar family were the main beneficiaries.

But there have always been suspicions that others may also have been involved.
During the December trial Anibalzinho insisted that he did not know and had never met Nyimpine Chissano, and claimed that the Satars were simply defaming the Chissano's family when they tried to link Nyimpine to the murder. So vehement was Anibalzinho on this point that he seemed more interest in defending the former president's son than in defending himself.

According to "Mediafax", he has told Cananda that he lied in court, because he had received guarantees that, if he did so, he would not be found guilty.

However the evidence against Anibalzinho was so overwhelming, regardless of who gave the orders, that the judge, Dimas Marroa, gave him a 30 year jail sentence. At the time, Anibalzinho's behaviour in court was so arrogant, so obviously contemptuous of the judge and the prosecution, that it prompted the Cardoso family lawyer, Lucinda Cruz, to ask, in her summing up, "Who is giving him the confidence to come here to tell lies and display his disrespect for the court ?" The "Mediafax" source says that, during the meeting with Cananda, held at the Maputo police command where Anibalzinho is currently incarcerated, the assassin provided "documentary evidence" tying Nyimpine Chissano to the murder.
"Mediafax" predicts that this unexpected turn of events will shortly lead to the arrest of Chissano Jr.

Nyimpine Chissano's lawyer is Albano Silva, who told "Mediafax"'s sister publication, the weekly paper "Savana", that he could make no comment because he has not even received a copy of the provisional charge sheet.

Chissano's choice of Silva as a lawyer is bound to prove controversial. Silva was the lawyer for the BCM in the investigations of the 1996 fraud, and it was his tireless work, plus Cardoso's campaigning journalism, that finally led to Ramaya and Nini Satar, and several of their accomplices receiving long prison sentences for defrauding the bank.

That trial was in 2004 - by which time the Satars and Ramaya were already serving sentences for the murder of Cardoso. The chain of events also included an attempt on Silva's life in November 1999. A bullet was fired through his car window that missed his skull by a couple of centimetres.

The people charged with this attempted murder include Anibalzinho and Nini Satar. The case may finally come to trial later this year.
Silva's decision to defend Chissano is eloquent proof of his belief that the Abdul Satars have fabricated the charges against Chissano as a smokescreen to hide their own guilt.

Fonte: Allafrica (06/05/12)