29 April 2008
Maputo — Businessman Ayob Abdul Satar, one of the men convicted in 2003 of ordering the murder of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, on Tuesday threatened to sue the Maputo daily paper "Noticias" for libel.
Satar is one of six people on trial before the Maputo City Court accused of the attempted murder of lawyer Albano Silva in November 1999, and it was his turn to give evidence on Tuesday.
But before the judge, Dimas Marroa, could ask him any questions, Satar raised what he called a "point of order", and denounced the "Noticias" coverage of the trial. He said he had hired "two more lawyers" (in addition to Domingos Arouca, the lawyer defending him in this trial) specifically to sue "Noticias" - though he did not say which part of the paper's coverage he regarded as libelous.
He demanded that the court "warn the media to cover this case with fairness and impartiality".
Marroa had no intention of telling the press what to do. "I can't tell journalists what to write and what not to write", he exclaimed. "That's not my job".
Although he was convicted of the Cardoso murder by judge Augusto Paulino in January 2003, and although his appeal against the verdict was rejected by the Supreme Court in February 2007, Ayob Satar insisted on his innocence, and at one point broke down in tears, claiming that his brothers Momad Assife ("Nini") and Asslam were victims of a plot by Albano Silva.
Members of the Abdul Satar family were the main beneficiaries of the 1996 fraud, in which the equivalent of 14 million US dollars was stolen from the country's largest bank, the BCM. Silva was the bank's lawyers, and vigorously pursued the fraudsters. Some of them escaped: Asslam Abdul Satar and his parents were last heard of living in Pakistan.
The members of the family still in Maputo allege that the fraud was masterminded by members of the BCM Board of Directors, claims that were largely discredited during the fraud trial held in 2004.
Ayob Satar used some of his time on the witness stand in an attempt to reopen the BCM fraud case. "It's the directors of the bank who destroyed my brothers lives, and Albano Silva has protected them!", he exclaimed, despite the judge's attempt to restrict the hearing to matters directly connected with the attempted murder.
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