Maputo — The trial of the six men convicted of murdering investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso was "a victory for Mozambican justice which emerged strengthened from the experience", declared Attorney-General Joaquim Madeira on Wednesday.

Giving his annual report to the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Madeira said it was important that the lessons learnt from the Cardoso murder trial "be applied in the other complex cases that are still to be cleared up".

"Efforts must be concentrated in the fight against organised crime, because the criminals cannot continue to act with impunity", declared Madeira. "It is imperative to force them onto the defensive, and establish a climate of peace and stability, essential for the development of the country".

Madeira admitted that bringing the assassins to justice had not been easy. "During the investigation, we began to feel a certain apathy from some members of the investigating team, characterised by failure to take measures that had been jointly planned, and failure to attend meetings", said Madeira.

He was referring to two officials of the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC) who were know to have links with the Abdul Satar crime family, whom Cardoso had been investigating and were always the prime suspects in his murder.

These officers were removed from the case, said Madeira, and others appointed "which happened thanks to good coordination between the Ministry of the Interior and the Attorney-General's Office". He said he had met personally with Interior Minister Almerino Manhenje "whenever necessary".

"Thanks to the dynamic of the new team, and to coordination, clues previously hidden were discovered, which later led to the detention of the first suspects (in late February 2001)", Madeira said. When all six were detained "we understood that this was not a simple murder, motivated by personal revenge or the like, but a real case of organised crime involving professional hitmen, a great deal of money, and corruption".

Madeira revealed that "this situation began to cause hesitation on the part of some of the staff involved in the case.

Fearing for their lives, they seemed to lose their initial boldness. However, they soon got over their fear, and it was not necessary to replace them".

The same could not be said of the judge. The case was sent to the 10th section of the Maputo city court, and the first judge dealing with it took no action. "Concerned at the inertia to which the case seemed condemned, we were delighted to see it given to another judge", said Madeira. This judge was Augusto Paulino, who saw the case through right up to the trial.

Madeira condemned a series of "attitudes and behaviour exactly contrary to the indignation expressed by all segments of society immediately after the crime was committed". This behaviour included the disappearance from the top security jail of one of the accused, Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), shortly before the trial, attempts to intimidate judge Paulino and prosecuting attorney Mourao Baluce, difficulties in obtaining the report of the autopsy carried out on Cardoso, and "the fraudulent introduction of mobile phones into the prison for the use of the accused, seeking to obstruct the work of the investigators".

Madeira also attacked "the abuse of the press in order to denigrate the authorities involved in the case", and particularly "the publication of provocative articles by the accused against the magistrates involved".

Week after week, articles by the assassins, notably by Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), usually disguised as paid advertisements, appeared in the paper "Savana". The man who was then "Savana"'s head of reporting, Paulo Machava, was publicly accused by prominent lawyer Albano Silva, of being in league with the Satars. Publication of these grotesque articles only came to an end when Machava left the paper, and it acquired a new editor, Fernando Goncalves, who was trained under Cardoso at AIM in the 1980s.

The development of the murder case, said Madeira, "really did show that there is a lot that has to be purged from our legal system, and even from our press. And it showed that the main obstacles to our system are endogenous".

"That's why, in order to guarantee professionalism, it was necessary to change police agents, inspectors and even judges to overcome vulnerabilities in the face of the action of the crime syndicate responsible for the murder of Carlos Cardoso", he declared.

Madeira added that, during the trial, matters were raised that could lead to further prosecutions. He mentioned no names, but he was obviously referring to the claims made by Nini Satar that businessman Nyimpine Chissano, the oldest son of President Joaquim Chissano, paid for the murder.

Madeira said that the Public Prosecutor's Office has interrogated the persons mentioned in court (apart from Chissano Jr, these include his business partner Apolinario Pateguana, and rich businesswoman Candida Cossa), and opened a second case file on the murder.

But he made it clear that nobody is going to be put on trial on the basis of unsupported statements made from the dock by Nini Satar. He noted that the convicted assassins had repeatedly resorted to intimidation and corruption (against judge, prosecutor and witnesses): they had proved that they were "capable of saying or doing anything, for purposes that only they know".

Thus, "for the sake of truth and justice", it was important to investigate the second murder file "with all care and perspicacity".

Madeira called for "redoubled efforts " by police and prosecutors to dismantle the entire organised crime network involved in the death of Cardoso - thus implying that he believes it consists of more than six people. He urged the police to tackle "the other crime syndicates that still exist, thus breaking the backbone of organised crime in Mozambique".