20 May 2008
Maputo — Where is the gun that was used to murder investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso in November 2000?
This issue suddenly came to the fore on Tuesday during the trial before the Maputo City Court of six men charged with the attempted murder of lawyer Albano Silva in 1999, a case that is intimately linked with the assassination of Cardoso a year later.
Put back on the witness stand, Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), the man who led the death squad that murdered Cardoso, claimed that he could "explode" with new revelations, if he so chose. "For instance, where is the gun used to kill Carlos Cardoso?", he asked.
Anibalzinho may have intended the question rhetorically, but the presiding judge, Dimas Marroa, wanted it answered.
"Ask Dudu!", snapped Anibalzinho. (Dudu is the nickname of a second of the accused, Oswaldo Muianga, once a close friend of Anibalzinho, but now testifying against him).
Muianga retorted "I don't know this gun or where it is. If he thinks it's with me, let him say where I put it!"
When the judge insisted, Anibalzinho claimed that the gun had belonged to Miguel Chamusse (a car thief who died some years ago in South Africa), and that after the murder of Cardoso it was given to Muianga.
He alleged that the stolen Citi-Golf used in the murder was often parked at Muianga's house.. "Dudu looked after the cars stolen in the city", Anibalzinho claimed. "He knows everything we did. There was nothing I could do without informing Dudu. When Carlos Cardoso died, I told Dudu. When the Citi-Golf was taken to South Africa (the day after the murder), the gun was given to Dudu".
But the man Anibalzinho recruited to pull the trigger, Carlitos Rachid, and who confessed to the assassination, gave a rather different story about the fate of the gun.. "Rachid said the gun was stored at your house", Marroa reminded him.
Anibalzinho claimed that he and Muianga had fallen out over money. He had damaged a Mercedes Benz belonging to Muianga in a traffic accident, and then broke his promise to provide his friend with a new car. He believed this was why Muianga had incriminated him in the plot to kill Albano Silva.
"I trusted Dudu as a brother, but now I regard him as a demon, because everything has changed in my life", declared Anibalzinho. "I never smoked, I never drank or took drugs. But now my health is 50 per cent in the grave, all because I put my faith in Dudu".
He was referring to the meetings which Muianga claimed Anibalzinho attended in the Rovuma hotel. Muianga said there were three such meetings held in mid-2002 to plot a second attempt on Silva's life, after the first one had failed.
Anibalzinho too had spoken of the meetings in his own trial in December 2005, but now he has changed his mind, and insists that no such meetings ever occurred. He took particular exception to a claim by Muianga that at one of the meetings Ayob Abdul Satar had demanded that Anibalzinho "bring me Albano Silva's tie soaked in blood".
"That's a really heavy thing to say!", exclaimed Anibalzinho.
"Is it heavier than picking up an AK-47 and killing somebody with it?", asked Marroa, referring to the murder of Cardoso..
"I don't have the courage to do that. That's why I hired the others (Carlitos Rachid and Manuel Fernandes)", replied Anibalzinho.
Repeatedly Anibalzinho claimed that the person who had asked him to murder Cardoso was Nyimpine Chissano, son of former President Joaquim Chissano. Everything he had said to the contrary, he had been coached to say by Nyimpine. Conveniently for Anibalzinho, Nyimpine Chissano can no longer deny this, since he died of a heart attack last November.
The prosecution pointed out that a second case file on the murder, with Nyimpine as the main suspect, was opened in late 2002, Repeatedly Anibalzinho was called for questioning in this investigation, and just as repeatedly he always said that Nyimpine had nothing to do with it.
"Everything I said, it was because I was in contact with Nyimpine", he said. He even claimed that Nyimpine told him to change his lawyer. Asked why he had blindly followed Nyimpine's supposed instructions, he claimed that Chissano Jr had promised him "protection".
"He said he would help me in all matters, in the case, in the sentence", Anibalzinho added. In fact, no help from any quarter was forthcoming, the trial went ahead, and Anibalzinho was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. Despite this, Anibalzinho continued to claim Nyimpine was innocent until after Nyimpine's death.
He also boasted to Marroa that, when the second Cardoso murder file comes to court (rather unlikely with the main suspect dead), "I swear, on the soul of my mother, I will prove Nyimpine's involvement in the murder".
"I will remember that", remarked Marroa.
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