22 May 2008
Maputo — Antonio Frangoulis, the former head of the Maputo branch of the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC), on Thursday categorically denied meeting with Mozambique's most notorious assassin, Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), before Anibalzinho was extradited from Swaziland, in late February 2001.
Anibalzinho is currently serving a 30 year jail sentence for the murder, in November 2000, of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, and is currently on trial before the Maputo City Court for his part in the attempted murder of lawyer Albano Silva a year earlier.
There have been repeated claims that Frangoulis met Anibalzinho in Swaziland and made him various promises. But on Thursday, Frangoulis stressed that the arrest of Anibalzinho was exclusively in the hands of the Swazi police, who detained him, and a second member of the Cardoso death squad, Manuel Fernandes, for entering the country illegally.
Frangoulis said that he and other officers went into Swaziland, not to speak to Anibalzinho, but to discuss the problem of Anibalzinho's nationality with their Swazi counterparts. For the assassin had two passports - a Portuguese one, in his own name, and a fake Mozambican passport in the name of Carlos Pinto da Cruz. Should he be deported to Mozambique or to Portugal?
It was decided that the case of his illegal entry into Swaziland should be heard by a Swazi magistrate, and he would then be thrown out of the country. Frangoulis was successful in persuading the Swazis that he should be expelled into Mozambique - and at the Namaacha border post the Mozambican police were waiting for him.
Much to Frangoulis's surprise, Anibalzinho rang him up on his mobile phone. "I did not see him, and I don't know who gave him my phone number", said Frangoulis. "The first time he saw me in person was at his first hearing in Maputo. I didn't even go to the Swazi police station where Anibalzinho was held. I just spoke to the national police command in Swaziland".
He confirmed that a former policeman detained in the Maputo maximum security prison, Paulo Wane (who happens to be Anibalzinho's uncle) was present at a 2002 attempt to tape an interview with Anibalzinho in the prison office. Anibalzinho had demanded to speak to Frangoulis, and he accepted - but took along tape recording equipment hidden under his clothing.
But Frangoulis cannot have secured the tape recorder very well, for it fell out, leading to an angry exchange with Anibalzinho who did not want his words taped.
Anibalzinho confirmed this incident, but then told presiding judge Dimas Marroa "I would not like to say another word in this court because yesterday I received information that I was speaking too much and my life is in danger". If this latest claim by Anibalzinho was supposed to sound dramatic, it backfired - the only response it elicited was smiles and muffled laughter.
One of Anibalzinho's fellow defendants, the loan shark Momad Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), made a belated attempt to drag the former first lady, Marcelina Chissano, into the Cardoso murder.
Satar, his brother Ayob, and their associate, former bank manager Vicente Ramaya, were found guilty in January 2003 of ordering Cardoso's murder, a verdict that was confirmed by the Supreme Court in February 2007. Nonetheless, Nini Satar has continued to claim that he only paid Anibalzinho for the murder on the instructions of Nyimpine Chissano, oldest son of former president Joaquim Chissano. At the murder trial he claimed that the money for the killing was really a loan to Nyimpine - neither the presiding judge at that trial, Augusto Paulino, or the Supreme Court, found this story remotely convincing.
Now Satar has gone a step further and has invoked the name of Nyimpine's mother. He claimed that Nyimpine had promised to ensure that he would be released from prison, and because of this throughout 2001 and early 2002 he did not mention Nyimpine's name when detectives and prosecutors questioned him about the murder.
Satar claimed he had phoned Nyimpine up in 2002 (none of the accused ever faced difficulties in acquiring mobile phones in what is supposed to be a top security jail) and complained, He wanted to know why Nyimpine had not kept his alleged promise.
"He said he had explained to somebody in the Justice sector to take us out, but the Supreme Court was taking a long time", said Satar. "Nyimpine passed the phone over to Marcelina Chissano who said we should not worry, that Nyimpine would sort it all out, and that we should keep calm".
Typically for Nini Satar's claims, there are no witnesses to this phone call, and no evidence that it ever took place.
After years of declaring that he organised the murder of Cardoso on the instructions of the Satar brothers and Ramaya, Anibalzinho changed his story this year, bringing it more or less into line with that of Satar, and blaming everything on Nyimpine. This change of line, however, only happened after Nyimpine's death from a heart attack in November. Judge Marroa has repeatedly noted that dead men are in no position to refute claims made against them.
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