allAfrica.com: Mozambique: Libellous Campaign Against Attorney-General Rolls On (Page 1 of 2)

For the fourth consecutive week, the right-wing Maputo paper "Zambeze" has targeted Attorney-General Augusto Paulino, with claims that he is the accused in a case before the Supreme Court involving the alleged theft of 300,000 meticais (about 12,500 US dollars).

There is a problem for the "Zambeze" campaign, however - which is that all charges against Paulino were dropped months ago.

The allegations against Paulino were made immediately it became known, in July, that President Armando Guebuza wished to sack the former Attorney-General, Joaquim Madeira, and give Paulino the job. The timing was most suspicious, and made it look as though the embezzlement charge was merely a crude attempt to stop Paulino becoming Attorney-General.

The matter first went to the Supreme Council of the Judicial Magistrature (CSMJ), the body responsible for disciplining judges (since Paulino had been the presiding judge of the Maputo Provincial Court at the time of the alleged theft). The CSMJ set up a commission of inquiry, which investigated the allegation and found there was no evidence against Paulino.

But then, in a further delaying tactic, the Attorney-General's Office sent a formal criminal accusation against Paulino to the Supreme Court (the only court which can hear cases against senior judges). The case collapsed, and the prosecution dropped the charges.

But now, some four months later, "Zambeze" insists that the case is ongoing and that Paulino is still a suspect. Papers which have pointed out that there are no longer any charges, notably a second weekly, "Magazine Independente" (MI), have effectively been accused in the pages of "Zambeze" of lying to their readers.

Last week, "Zambeze" put a former deputy attorney-general, Isabel Rupia, on its front page with the claim "I never dropped the charges" (against Paulino). This week, "Zambeze" journalist Alvarito de Carvalho, the man who wrote the previous articles libelling Paulino, alleges "there is no proof" of any dispatch from prosecutors dropping the charges.

Yet on Thursday morning it took AIM just a two minute phone call to the Supreme Court to establish that the charges were indeed dropped, and that the dispatch dropping the charges was signed by assistant attorney-general Erasmo Nhavoto.

Rupia's outburst was irrelevant since nobody had ever suggested that she signed the dispatch. Furthermore, by the time the dispatch was issued, she had already lost her post as an assistant attorney-general. Indeed all six assistant attorney-generals were dismissed, in line with new legislation implementing the provisions of the 2004 Constitution on the Attorney-General's Office.

This states that assistant attorney-generals must apply for the job through a public recruitment process open to all Mozambican citizens over the age of 35, with a law degree, and with ten years experience. Nhavoto was the first assistant attorney-general to be appointed who met these requirements.

The question that arises is: if AIM can find out, after just one phone call, that the charges against Paulino really have been dropped, why is "Zambeze" still flogging this very dead horse ?

The answer is clearly that this is not journalism at all, but a concerted campaign against Paulino. It is a campaign that may prove very expensive. For Paulino's patience has finally snapped, and he has issued libel writs against "Zambeze", against its director, Fernando Veloso, and against Alvarito de Carvalho.

"Zambeze" goes out of its way to court libel suits. Last year it was found guilty of libeling Francisco Machambisse, the election agent for Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the former rebel movement Renamo, in the 2004 Presidential elections. A "Zambeze" columnist, Edwin Hounnou, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, claimed that Machambisse had taken a bribe of a million dollars from the ruling Frelimo Party. This supposedly explained why the Renamo appeal against the election results was delivered late.

Since Hounnou admitted he had no evidence for his claim, the guilty verdict was inevitable. The court awarded damages of 80,000 meticais (3,200 dollars) to Machambisse, not yet paid because "Zambeze" has lodged an appeal. The appeal has no chance, but there is no procedure for throwing out vexatious appeals, and so "Zambeze" can at least win several months (or, given the slowness of the system, even years).

The paper is also being sued by prominent lawyer, Albano Silva, husband of Prime Minister Luisa Diogo, over articles written by Carvalho in March 2007. Carvalho regurgitated suggestions made by a former colonial administrator, Faruk Gadit, that Silva had used a loan from the public treasury to buy a "luxury apartment" in Lisbon.

The story was absurd. Silva had no difficulty in producing documents showing that the money for the Lisbon flat had been obtained, not from the Mozambican treasury, but from a loan granted by the Portuguese state bank, the Caixa Geral de Depositos (CGD).

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