25 July 2008
Maputo — Mozambican prosecutors intend to question convicted assassin Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), in connection with the murder in August 2001 year of Antonio Siba-Siba Macuacua, the interim chairperson of the crisis-ridden Austral Bank, according to a report in Friday's issue of the newsheet "Diario de Noticias".
This paper claimed that Nini Satar will be interviewed on the premises of the Maputo top security jail where he is serving a 24 year jail sentence for his part in ordering the murder, in November 2000, of the country's top investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso.
By the time Siba-Siba was murdered, Satar was already in prison. But he had regular access to cell phones, and hence to contact with the outside world. It is not yet clear whether the public prosecutor's office regard. Satar as a suspect, or merely believe that he may have information useful to the Siba-Siba investigation.
During the Cardoso murder trial, one of the witnesses, a car thief named Marcial Muthemba, whom Satar employed as an errand boy in the prison, said he had discovered that Satar had a list of people he wanted eliminated, including "somebody in the bank whose name I don't know".
Another witness, Gerry Opa Manganhela, who struck up a friendship with Satar in prison, told the court that Satar asked him to murder Siba-Siba. A plan was hatched to corrupt a policeman named Manhica, who would release Opa from jail in order to assassinate Siba-Siba. The plot supposedly fell through when Manhica delayed in replying.
Prosecutors also wish to question two other people currently residing in the top security jail, the paper said, naming them as Armacao and Hoaracio de Conceicao.
While the name of Conceicao has not been mentioned before, Armacao is presumably the same person as Carlitos Armacao who allegedly confessed to the murder in May 2003. At the time a report in the weekly paper "Zambeze" said that Armacao was jailed in 1997 for the murder of artist Eugenio de Lemos, but escaped in July 2001, only to be re-arrested in April 2003.
The date of his escape led to speculation that perhaps he had been illicitly released in order to murder Siba-Siba. According to the "Zambeze" story, Armacao initially denied any connection with the murder, but later said he had "indirect" involvement, acting as a lookout, watching for any police movements in the vicinity of the Austral headquarters.
He claimed that the men who actually killed Siba-Siba were two South Africans. Armacao drove them to the bank, and acted as lookout while they went up to Siba-Siba's office on the top floor, murdered the banker and threw his body down the stairwell. Armacao then drove them away again.
At the time, prosecutors seemed to regard this story as an invention. For there was no follow-up, and Armacao was not charged with the murder, leading observers to believe that somebody had pulled the wool over "Zambeze"'s eyes and that there was no confession.
Last week prosecutors questioned four former officials of the bank, including Octavio Muthemba who was chairman of the board, as Austral sank towards bankruptcy under a mountain of bad loans. The others questioned were Janu Hassane, who had been a non-executive director of the bank, Alvaro Massinga who had been a member of its Supervisory Board, and Parente Junior, who had served under Siba-Siba on the interim board set up after Austral's near collapse in April 2001.
The "Diario de Noticias" sources claimed that the four had "not been very collaborative" when questioned, but gave no further details.
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