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Mozambique: Albano Silva Case - Witness Testifies On Phone Records
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
13 May 2008
Posted to the web 13 May 2008
Maputo
The mobile phone records presented by the prosecution in the trial of six men accused of the 1999 attempted murder of lawyer Albano Silva appear to be genuine, according to an expert witness from the mobile phone company, M-Cel.
Just as in the case of the murder of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, in November 2000, the prosecution has relied heavily on the mobile phone records, obtained from M-Cel by court order, to show a pattern of communications between the accused, and with other key figures and institutions.
Several of the accused denied knowing each other prior to their arrests, and denied visiting the Rovuma Hotel, where conspiratorial meetings to plot a second attempt on Silva's life are alleged to have taken place.
But if the mobile phone records are to be trusted, the accused did ring each other up, and some of them also put in calls to the Rovuma.
Faced with the damaging evidence of their phone contacts, the two businessmen who allegedly ordered the hit on Albano Silva (and who were both convicted in 2003 for their part in the murder of Carlos Cardoso), Ayob Abdul Satar and his brother Momad Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini") last week challenged the veracity of the records.
Nini Satar even accused Silva himself of falsifying the records. "This isn't an M-Cel file, it's a piece of paper typed by Albano Silva on a computer", he claimed last Thursday.
So the court called in a technical expert from M-Cel, Casimiro Balane, to look at the files of mobile phone calls in its possession. Under oath, Balane inspected one of the files on Tuesday, and said it did indeed follow the M-Cel format. At the bottom of each page were codes identical with those printed by the M-Cel computer programmes.
"At first sight, there is nothing to indicate that this is not an M-Cel file", he declared. But the only way to be a hundred per cent certain would be "to recreate the file" - in other words, to go the M-Cel computers and print out calls made and received from and to the relevant numbers at the relevant dates and see if the result is the same as the files held by the court.
When the defence lawyers insisted that the files could be forgeries, Balane remarked that they were calling the integrity of M-Cel into question. While it was theoretically possibly to adulterate or corrupt any computer programme, he could not see any M-Cel worker, and certainly not the system administrators (the ones who have access to this sort of programme) committing such an act.
As the defence continued to insist on a conspiracy to produce bogus phone records, the judge, Dimas Marroa, remarked "Any system can be manipulated. Anything made by human beings can be manipulated".
When Nini Satar again alleged that the records had somehow been doctored by Silva on a private computer, Silva retorted angrily "I don't understand anything about computers, and I don't accept that you, somebody else who knows nothing about computers, make this kind of remark. The files were ordered from M-Cel by the court".
As Silva was speaking, Ayob Satar jumped to his feet and started shouting and yelling at Silva. The exasperated judge ordered him removed from the court, and taken back to his cell.
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Satar's lawyer, Domingos Arouca, protested that Silva should also have been thrown out of the courtroom, but Marroa retorted "I am running this trial. You should tell your client to be disciplined. Nobody authorized him to stand up and speak, and it is not the first time he has done that".
Marroa accepted a suggestion by the lawyer representing Silva, Antonio Vasconcelos Porto, that M-Cel be instructed to recreate the file for one of the numbers in question for the period 2000-2001. But since M-Cel normally keeps data for just five years, it is possible that these records no longer exist.
The trial has been adjourned until next Monday.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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