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Mozambique: Albano Silva Case - Dangerman Demands A Million Dollars
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
2 July 2008
Posted to the web 2 July 2008
Maputo
Paulo Estevao ("Dangerman"), one of the six men acquitted on Monday of the attempts against the life of prominent lawyer Albano Silva in 1999 and 2000, has told reporters that he will demand compensation of a million US dollars from Silva.
Shortly after his release, Dangerman claimed that he had been arrested "because I'm a friend of Nini" (the nickname of the loan shark Momad Assife Abdul Satar, one of the men accused of ordering the attempts on Silva's life. Like Dangerman, Nini Satar was acquitted because judge Dimas Marroa of the Maputo City Court deemed there was insufficient evidence for a conviction. Unlike Dangerman, he was returned to his cell in the Maputo top security jail, where he is serving a lengthy sentence for his part in the murder, in November 2000, of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso).
Dangerman boasted "I'm going to request a million dollars and Albano Silva is going to give me that money. I'm going to chase that money to the end".
However, it was not merely Albano Silva who accused Dangerman of attempted murder. So did the Public Prosecutor's Office. Nor does Silva bear any responsibility for keeping Dangerman in jail for seven years - it is the habitual lethargy of the Mozambican legal system which allowed so much time to elapse between the crime and the trial.
Asked what he intended to do now, Dangerman said "I'll rest for a couple of months, and then I'll go to Dubai. I'll go to Dubai because the parents of Nini will be pleased to see me there. Thus they will believe that Nini too will one day leave prison".
Nini Satar's parents, Abdul Satar Abdul Karim and Hawabay Abdul Latifo, and his brother Asslam Abdul Satar, are all fugitives from Mozambican justice. They were among those who opened fraudulent accounts in the branch of the country's largest bank, the BCM, run by Satar acquaintance Vicente Ramaya in 1996. These accounts were used to plunder the BCM of the equivalent of 14 million US dollars.
When the fraud was discovered, the Abdul Satars fled the country and made their way to Dubai. Nini Satar, however, returned a few months later. By this time key prosecutors were working with, rather than against Ramaya and the Satars, and it was feared that the case would never come to court.
That a trial was eventually held, in 2004, is tribute to the tenacity of Silva, who was the BCM's lawyer, and to the campaigning journalism of Carlos Cardoso. Cardoso paid for his outspokenness with his life, and the same fate almost overtook Silva.
The 2004 trial sentenced Nini Satar to 14 years jail, but the court could not reach his relatives in exile. But if Dangerman expects to find the family still in Dubai, he is in for a disappointment: AIM's information is that they are currently all in Pakistan.
Asked whether he believed that the outcome of the trial meant that his life was once more in danger, Silva told reporters that he was not afraid, because those whom he believed had ordered the earlier attempts are still behind bars. He was referring to Nini Satar, his older brother Ayob, and Ramaya, all of whom were found guilty of ordering the Cardoso assassination.
Silva also insisted that he could not be blamed for the failure of the police to investigate the original crime scene properly. The main reason given by Marroa for acquitting all six defendants was that there had never been any ballistic investigation of the car used by Silva on the night of the attack (29 November 1999).
No police expert had checked the window where the would-be assassin's bullet had exited. No attempt was made to find the bullet, and the car was not even photographed. Students from a nearby university residence who heard the shot and went to Silva's assistance were not tracked down and questioned.
This manifest negligence has allowed the Satars, eight years later, to claim that there was no murder attempt at all, and that Silva just made it up.
"The proof was always in my car", Silva said. "The police didn't do their job. The police had more than three or four hours, but they didn't do the work".
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As for the defence allegation that he had driven the car, a vital piece of evidence, away, Silva said he only moved the car because the police ordered him to do so. In the ensuing days, no police officer contacted him or came to his house to look at the car.
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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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