Maputo — Once again, a Mozambican paper has given a full page to a convicted assassin to plead his innocence.

The man in question is Ayob Abdul Satar, one of the businessmen found guilty in 2003 of ordering the assassination of Mozambique's foremost investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso.

The weekly paper "Magazine Independente" (MI) has published a letter from Satar, as a paid advertisement, in which he denounces the daily paper "Noticias" and its sister publication, the Sunday paper "Domingo" for telling "monstrous lies".

The "lies" in question are articles stating that the appeals by Satar and the others convicted of the Cardoso murder have failed and that the case has now returned to the Maputo City Court which must execute the original sentence passed by the trial judge, Augusto Paulino, back in January 2003.

So not only must the killers remain in jail, but they must now pay the compensation ordered by the court - 14 billion old meticais (588,000 US dollars, at the exchange rate of the time), to Cardoso's two children, Ibo and Milena, and 500 million old meticais to Cardoso's driver, Carlos Manjate, who was severely injured in the shooting and has not been able to work since.

"Noticias", wailed Satar, told "enormous falsehoods" in its Saturday article. His letter/advertisement claims that the Supreme Court has not yet taken a final decision on the appeal.

There is a great deal to criticize in the journalism of "Noticias" and "Domingo" - but on this issue they are essentially correct. The appeal has been heard and rejected, the ploys by the defence lawyers have come to nothing, and all that remains is for the convicted men to pay the compensation.

On one technical legal issue Satar is correct and "Noticias" is wrong. The Supreme Court Plenary has not rejected the appeal - but that is simply because the Plenary is not empowered to overrule the Supreme Court criminal section on matters of fact. The Plenary did not reject the appeal because it was not competent to hear the appeal.

AIM spoke to two Supreme Court judges on Wednesday who confirmed that there were no grounds for appeal to the Plenary.

The Supreme Court criminal section issued a lengthy ruling in February 2007 which rejected the appeal, and reaffirmed the sentence passed by Paulino four years earlier. The lawyers for the assassins then appealed to the Supreme Court Plenary. But such appeals can only be made on points of law, not points of fact.

So the Section denied Satar and his accomplices leave to appeal. The lawyers then resorted to a complaint against this refusal. They sent a protest to the Supreme Court plenary, in a desperate attempt to overturn the ruling from the section.

When this protest finally came before the plenary, the judges refused to accept it. They restated the legal position that appeal may only be had to the Supreme Court plenary on matters of law, not matters of fact.

So the appeal never went to the plenary, and hence Satar is technically correct to say that there is no ruling from the plenary on the appeal. And there never will be one. The plenary simply reasserted that the decision taken by the Section, in February 2007, is final.

Mozambican legal procedures are ponderous and can be agonizingly slow, but they do eventually reach an end. There are no more avenues of appeal, no matter how many letters Ayob Satar writes to gullible newspapers.

He would be better advised to look for ways to pay the compensation. If he (and the other five men convicted of the murder) do not pay voluntarily within a month of notification, the city court has the power to collect the money coercively, grabbing whatever Satar assets it can find.

Jurists contacted by AIM point out that, if the assassins do not pay the compensation, they will not be eligible for conditional release after serving half their prison terms.

Ayob Satar also attacks "Noticias" for saying that the Supreme Court has ordered the immediate execution of the sentence in the connected case of the 1996 bank fraud in which members of the Abdul Satar family, and their accomplice, bank manager, Vicente Ramaya, stole the equivalent of 14 million dollars from the Commercial Bank of Mozambique (BCM).

The irony here is that Ayob Satar was acquitted in the BCM case. Is he denouncing the "Noticias" coverage on behalf of his brother Momad Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), who was sentenced to 14 years for his part in the fraud?

As with the Cardoso case, so in the BCM case. After the Supreme Court criminal section threw out the appeal, there were no grounds of law for an appeal to the Plenary. The Plenary has not issued a ruling, because there is nothing to rule on. The decision of the section stands and must now be implemented.

As one judge told AIM "That's it. It's finished. Absolutely final. There is not a power in the country that can change the decision".