Maputo — A retired senior Mozambican police officer on Thursday told the Maputo City Court that he had never forced Paulo Dangerman, one of the six men currently on trial for the 1999 attempted murder of lawyer Albano Silva to make any confession.

Dangerman once worked as head of security at Unicambios, the now defunct foreign exchange bureau owned by Ayob Abdul Satar, one of the businessmen accused of ordering both the murder of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso in November 2000, and the attempt against Silva's life a year earlier. In a confession in 2001, Dangerman had admitted to working as a debt collector for Satar's younger brother, Momad Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini").

Nini Satar ran a lucrative loan-sharking business out of his office in Unicambios. Dangerman had admitted demanding money from Satar's debtors in the company Bazaar Central, and in the Social Centre of the Maputo Mahometan Club. But in this trial he told the court that this was all lies, and he had been coerced in to signing this statement by the then commander of the Maputo Provincial Police Command, Alberto Alconi.

Called to the witness stand, Alconi said that, as provincial commander, he was in overall charge of the forces in his province, including the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC), but never took part in any investigative work. He provided logistical support for PIC investigators (such as fuel for their vehicles), and liaised with the Ministry of the Interior, but never questioned suspects.

"I did not take part in investigations. I had nothing to do with that", he said. "I was the commander not a detective. I did not even ask what the detectives were doing"..

Alconi said he knew Dangerman by sight, since Dangerman had frequented the Kaya Kwanga hotel where Alconi lived for three years, but never engaged him in conversation.

As commander he sometimes received orders to locate suspects. "Once I had located them, my part of the operations ended". He denied ever being ordered to coach an accused in what to say or confess.

A second witness, former policeman Paulo Wane, denied claims made from the witness stand on Monday by car thief Marcial Muthemba, that he had put Muthemba into contact with Albano Silva in 2001. Muthemba gave evidence against Nini Satar in the Carlos Cardoso murder trial in December 2002 - but now he claimed that he had been coached by Silva, who had supposedly visited him in the Maputo Civil Prison to tell him what to say.

Silva has categorically denied these claims, and now Wane said he had never contacted Silva on Muthemba's behalf. Wane was under arrest in 2001 and met Muthemba in the Maputo top security jail (before the latter was transferred to the civil prison),

Wane said he knew Muthemba in prison, just as he knew many other prisoners, but did not regard him as a friend. He did meet Silva in the prison office - but that was because Silva was his defence lawyer. He said he discussed his own defence case with Silva, and did not mention Muthemba. Whereas Muthemba spoke of clandestine, nocturnal visits by Silva to the civil prison, these visits, Wane said, were in daylight, at the top security jail, as part of normal lawyer-client relations.

Silva won the case, and Wane was acquitted in mid -2002. Later on (he could not remember the date) he met Muthemba in a street in the southern city of Matola (Muthemba had been released in early 2003, because his case file went mysteriously missing).

He said Muthemba asked him for Silva's phone number, which he did not have. Wane told Muthemba that, if he wanted to hire Silva's services, he should just go to the lawyer's office. "Lots of people knew that Albano Silva was my lawyer", he said. "Even today come up to me and say they want to speak to Albano Silva, I just tell then to go to his office".