1 July 2008
Maputo — The Maputo City Court on Tuesday acquitted all six men accused of the attempts against the life of prominent lawyer Albano Silva in 1999 and 2000.
Silva suffered the first assassination attempt on the evening of 29 November 1999, when he was driving home along Mao Tse-Tung Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in central Maputo. On this broad dual carriageway, a car drew up alongside his and a pistol was fired through Silva's open window. The bullet missed him by a few millimetres.
The prosecution argued that the murder attempt was ordered by Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), because of Silva's role as lawyer for the largest Mozambican bank, the BCM, which had been defrauded to the tune of the equivalent of 14 million US dollars in 1996 by members of the Abdul Satar family, and their associate, BCM branch manager Vicente Ramaya.
Silva was a thorn in the Abdul Satar flesh, because of his persistence in ensuring that the fraud case came to trial, in the face of serious corruption in the public prosecutor's office. According to the prosecution, Nini Satar hired an alleged car thief, Fernando Magno, to assassinate Silva, and paid him 40,000 South African rands for "preparatory work"
Magno in turn allegedly hired Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"). A year later Anibalzinho recruited the death squad that murdered investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, and he is currently serving a 30 year prison sentence for his part in that crime.
The prosecution also alleged that, in mid-2000, plans were laid for a second attempt on Silva's life in a series of conspiratorial meetings held at Maputo's Rovuma hotel. All three known meetings were attended by Nini Satar, Anibalzinho, and his friend Oswaldo Muianga ("Dudu"). Present in at least one of the meetings was Satar's brother, the owner of the now defunct Unicambios foreign currency bureau, Ayob Abdul Satar, and Vicente Ramaya.
The conspirators supposedly used the head of Unicambios security, Paulo Estevao ("Dangerman") to spy on Silva's movements, and undertake reconnaissance of his house. But the plan was put on hold when the conspirators decided to switch their attention to Carlos Cardoso. In January 2003, the Satar brothers and Ramaya were found guilty of ordering Cardoso's murder.
But in his Tuesday verdict, judge Dimas Marroa declared that none of this had been proved. His main objection was that the only evidence that there had been an assassination attempt in November 1999 was the statement given to the police by Silva.
The case was fatally weakened by the failure of the police at the Maputo third precinct to do their job properly. Marroa noted that on the night of the attack the police did not photograph Silva's car, and did not undertake any ballistic examination to determine what kind of projectile had hit the car's rear window. None of the students at a nearby university residence, who came to Silva's assistance, were interviewed.. No attempt was made to reconstruct the crime scene.
"The lack of an expert examination means that the court cannot conclude that a gun was fired", said Marroa.
There were two witnesses, journalist Jaime Cuambe of the Maputo daily "Noticias", and Silva's friend Marcelino Alves, a journalist on Radio Mozambique, who testified to the damage done to the car window. But their statements did not coincide (perhaps not surprising after a gap of over eight years), and neither of them were eye-witnesses to the shooting.
Marroa did not take the extreme position of Nini Satar and of several of the defence lawyers who claimed there had never been any attack and that Silva had made the whole thing up. But he did stress that ballistic evidence was crucial, and this simply did not exist.
So the case fell because of the negligence of the police. That negligence had been known since 1999, and indeed the prosecution's opening statement made specific reference to it. Right from the start of the investigations this police failure was well known. So why was a trial held at all? Why were the six men charged, and why did Marroa allow the trail to drag on to the bitter end, if all along he knew that key evidence was missing ?
Magno was on trial largely because he had confessed to firing the shot at Silva. Marroa, however, argued that a confession, not backed up by any other evidence, was insufficient grounds for a conviction. (During the trial, Magno withdrew his confession, which he claimed had been forced out of him by the then head of the Maputo branch of the Criminal Investigation Police, PIC, Antonio Frangoulis - an allegation indignantly rejected by Frangoulis).
As for Dangerman, nobody had positively identified him as the driver of the white Citi-Golf that had supposedly spied on Silva. Those who might have been able to make such an identification, Silva's bodyguards and domestic servant, had not even been called to give evidence.
As for conspiratorial meetings at the Rovuma, Marroa said this relied exclusively on the evidence of Muianga. But Muianga had changed his story. When first interviewed by PIC in 2001, he had spoken of the Rovuma meetings. But in early 2002, he signed his "confession of repentance", in which he said he had been lying and there were no such meetings. In October 2002, however, Muianga withdrew his withdrawal and reverted to his earlier story.
Marroa regarded Muianga as an untrustworthy witness. "He's probably telling the truth in one of his versions. But which one?", he asked.
Marroa's summary of Muianga's position was less than accurate. In fact, with the exception of a hiatus of about nine months in 2002, Muianga's story was essentially unchanged. And for much of this period, it was backed up by Anibalzinho.
During his own trial for the Cardoso murder, in December 2005, Anibalzinho spoke freely of the meetings in the Rovuma. He claimed that he had met the Satar brothers and Ramaya there, and they were looking for hit men to eliminate Silva and Cardoso. The judge in this case was also Marroa, and at this trial he accepted that the meetings in the Rovuma had indeed taken place.
Anibalzinho only changed his story this year. Suddenly, he adopted the Satar position that there had never been meetings in any hotel, and that the real meeting had been at Nini Satar's house with businessman Nyimpine Chissano, son of former president Joaquim Chissano, to plot the death of Cardoso.
This remarkable change in Anibalzinho's story only happened after the death of Nyimpine Chissano from a heart attack in November 2007. It is not clear why anyone should believe that Anibalzinho told the truth in 2008 rather than in 2005.
Marroa also noted that the police had not done their work properly about the Rovuma meetings either. Initially, Muianga cited hotel room numbers that do not exist. The prosecution thought such mistakes were understandable months or years after the event. But the police had made no attempt to check out the Rovuma to see what rooms might have been used.
The prosecution also relied heavily on cell phone records. These show that the accused spoke regularly among themselves (and with Vicente Ramaya), and also proved contacts between the Satars and the Rovuma hotel for the relevant period. When people who claim scarcely to know each other can be shown to have been in regular phone contact, clearly something suspicious is going on.
But Marroa dismissed the cell phone records, on the grounds that it is impossible to know what was said in the conversations. This is exactly the argument made by the defence lawyers: the prosecution, however, merely used the records to establish a pattern of contacts.
Marroa concluded that, on the principle that the defendants must always receive the benefit of the doubt, all six must all be acquitted. He made it clear, however, that acquittal is not proof of innocence. "The court has not said that you did not commit the crime, we have said there is not enough proof", he declared.
Magno, Dangerman and Muianga, who face no other charges, were immediately released. The Satar brothers and Anibalzinho, however, remain behind bars, serving their sentences for the Cardoso murder.
Both Albano Silva and public prosecutor Miguel Candido told reporters they have not yet decided whether to appeal against Marroa's verdict. They have five days in which to file an appeal.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
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.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
