allAfrica.com: Mozambique: Albano Silva Speaks of Assassination Attempt (Page 1 of 1)

Prominent Mozambican lawyer Albano Silva on Wednesday gave a graphic account of how gunmen almost ended his life in November 1999, thus effectively refuting claims that he had somehow faked the assassination attempt.

Over eight years after the attempted murder, the case has finally come before the Maputo City Court. Among those accused of the crime are the businessmen Ayob Abdul Satar and his brother Momad Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), men whom, in the late 1990s, Silva was battling to bring to court in connection with the country's largest bank fraud, in which the equivalent of 14 million US dollars was siphoned out of the Commercial Bank of Mozambique (BCM), through a series of fraudulent accounts opened in the names of members of the Abdul Satar family.

Testifying on Tuesday, Nini Satar had suggested that the murder attempt never took place, and if there was a bullet hole in a window of Silva's car, then the lawyer himself may have shot the gun..

Silva testified that the attack happened on the night of 29 November 1999. He was driving home along Mao Tse Tung Avenue, one of the broad tree-lined thoroughfares in central Maputo, when a car drew up parallel to his, and he saw a gun, which he believed was a pistol, pointing out of the passenger window at him.

Silva believed the gunman's car was pulling slightly ahead of his, for when the shot came the bullet passed through the open driver's window, through the gap between the driver's and passenger's seat, and exited through the rear left-hand window. Silva said the bullet missed him "by millimetres". He believed the gunman had intended to kill him.

The assassin's car drove away at high speed, and Silva parked his car in front of a student residence. Students had heard the shot and were gathering on the pavement. Inside the student residence, Silva's first impulse was to ring the then general commander of the police, Pascoal Ronda. But the students pointed out that there was a police station nearby (the Maputo Third Precinct). Students went to fetch the police, and within a few minutes Silva, accompanied by a police officer had driven his car to the precinct.

Silva told the court he was "in panic", and two journalists who went to the police station agreed. Jaime Cuambe, of the daily paper "Noticias", testified that Silva was "in a state of shock, and very tense", and it was quite impossible for him to interview the lawyer for his story in the following day's paper.

Feeling in need of moral support, and with his wife, the then Deputy Finance Minister (now Prime Minister) Luisa Diogo hundreds of kilometres away in Tete province, Silva rang up his old friend Marcelino Alves, a Radio Mozambique journalist. Alves also testified that Silva was "tense, pallid and almost in shock".

"I had never seen him like this before. He was very agitated", said Alves. He confirmed that there was a bullet hole in the rear left window, which seemed to confirm Silva's account - though Alves could not guarantee that this was where the bullet had left rather than entered the car.

The testimony of both Alves and Cuambe gave the lie to Nini Satar's claim that nobody except Silva had seen the car.

The defence also protested that no ballistic work had been done, there was no sign of the bullet or cartridge, and no police photo or description of the damage to the car. Silva agreed - but pointed out that this was the task of the police, not of the victim.

"I was in no condition to control the police", said Silva. "The police should have been able to do their work I never put any obstacle in the way of the police".

Silva pointed out that "the car was at the disposal of the police", yet they showed no interest in examining it. The car was driven to Silva's house, and a few days later the weakened back window collapsed entirely, thus making any ballistical work on the bullet hole impossible.

This was far from the only police failing that evening. The police made no attempt to identify or interview the students who had heard the shot and who had assisted Silva. Investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso went to the residence and interviewed the students. "But it was the police who should have taken this initiative", stressed Silva.

The police negligence is specifically mentioned in the charge sheet drawn up by the Public Prosecutor's Office, which notes that the police did not even bother to photograph the damaged car. The police, in essence, took no precautions to protect any evidence that may have been left at the crime scene.

This was part of a broader picture of corruption and incompetence in the late 1990s in the police and the prosecution service. Silva pointed out that a good number of senior police figures and prosecutors were working with the Abdul Satar family and not against them. They were collaborating with those who had defrauded the BCM to ensure that the case never came to court. As a result criminal proceedings against several key prosecutors, including the man initially in charge of the BCM case, Diamantino dos Santos, are now before the Supreme Court.

Silva pointed out that the commander of the Third Precinct in 1999 was the same man who, in 2000, tried to prevent the customs service from searching the home of suspected car thief Fernando Magno - one of the men whom the prosecution alleges was hired by Nini Satar for the assassination attempt.

"I have never seen a case in which there was such lack of interest on the part of the police", said Silva. "The Satars had such influence over the police and prosecutors". Some in the police derived material benefits from protecting racketeers. "The stolen cars were being purchased by police officers!", exclaimed Silva.

The defence has objected to the prosecution's use of the mobile phone records of the accused, which show, for example, that, despite Ayob Satar's claims that he had never spoken to Magno, or to convicted assassin Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), mny calls to these two were made from Satar's foreign exchange bureau, Unicambios.

Ayob Satar claimed the phone records were forged, while his lawyer, Domingos Arouca, said that, since Silva had requested the records, they were "necessarily suspect".

But Silva explained that, although it was his initiative to ask for the records, it was the City Court that issued the official demand that obliged the mobile phone company, M-Cel, to surrender its records. He stressed that such communications data "is always useful when fighting against crime".

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