Maputo — Every morning, when members of the public attend the Carlos Cardoso murder trial, held in a giant tent pitched on the football field of the Maputo top security prison, police carefully frisk us two, or sometimes three, times.

Anyone carrying a mobile phone is asked to leave it outside or at the prison reception desk. Posters are up in the grounds warning that the entry of mobile phones into the prison is strictly forbidden. The only exception made is for the judges and the lawyers.

Yet those charged with the murder of Carlos Cardoso are still able, apparently without any serious difficulty, to obtain mobile phones, and are still using them for entirely illicit activities.

On Tuesday, the prosecuting attorney, Mourao Baluce, presented to the court yet another mobile phone, a phone battery, and a portable television set, which had been seized from the cell of money-lender Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini") on Monday night. This is the third time that Baluce has brought phones seized from the accused into the court room. When judge Augusto Paulino asked if the phone belonged to him, Satar said calmly "At 18.15 last night another prisoner gave me the phone through the cell window. At about 20.00 a friend rang me up with information about the latest witnesses".

Satar spoke as if it was entirely normal for people accused of murder to have access to modern means of communication and to use them to spy on prosecution witnesses.

Months ago Satar publicly boasted that he was running a network of private detectives from his prison cell. No doubt this network is still in existence, posing a threat to witnesses, and interfering in the course of justice.