Maputo — Maputo loan shark Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), one of those charged with ordering the murder of Mozambique's top investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, on Thursday called for the phone records of Nyimpine Chissano, the oldest son of President Joaquim Chissano, and of his business associate Apolinario Pateguana, to be admitted as evidence in the Carlos Cardoso murder trial.
When they testified to the Maputo City court in December, Chissano and Pateguana, who are co-owners of the travel agency and car hire firm, Expresso Tours, denied any business dealings with Satar. Chissano said he had only met Satar once in his life.
But on Thursday Satar said the phone records told a different story. He suggested that the court should subpoena the records from the mobile phone company M-Cel referring to the numbers registered in the names of Chissano and Pateguana, from the period from January 2000 to now.
He gave judge Augusto Paulino three of these numbers (301107, 307089 and 312351), but believed there were probably others.
He claimed that a mobile phone using number 312351, registered in the name of Pateguana, was sent into the top security prison by Nyimpine Chissano to allow Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), the man accused of organising the death squad that murdered Cardoso, to keep in contact with him Satar said he persuaded Anibalzinho to let him use this phone, and so both he and Anibalzinho had been in phone contact with Chissano from the prison shortly after their arrest in early 2001. Satar is thus alleging that the president's son smuggled banned communications equipment into prisoners who, at the time, were supposed to be incommunicado.
Satar also gave Paulino copies of phone records that had been extracted from the case file on the attempted murder of lawyer Albano Silva in November 1999. He said that these mobile phone records were also relevant for the Carlos Cardoso case: they showed for instance that Anibalzinho rang a phone number registered in Pateguana's name five times in October 2000, the month before the murder.
Nini Satar also claimed the records showed that between April and July 2000 he rang one of Pateguana's numbers no less than 110 times. He implied that these were in reality phone calls made to Chissano since "some of Nyimpine's phones are registered in Pateguana's name".
"These people came to this court and said they didn't know me or Anibalzinho", said Satar. "These phone records prove that they're lying".
Satar elaborated on his earlier testimony that in the jail Anibalzinho assured him that they would soon be released, because the investigating magistrate would not send the case to trial.
"He said there was a guarantee that we would all be freed, because the person who ordered the crime would see to it", Satar told the court. "I thought he was telling the truth".
Right from the start of their imprisonment, both men had access to mobile phones: Satar said the first phone he had in the top security jail was sent to him by Anibalzinho. On that phone, Anibalzinho sent Satar a message warning "not to mention the payments I had made to him otherwise we would lose our protection". (According to Satar these payments to Anibalzinho, which amounted to the equivalent of 50,000 US dollars, were made at Nyimpine Chissano's request. He claimed that at the time he did not realise this was payment for a contract killing.) Anibalzinho instructed Satar not even to recognise him. This phone was taken from Anibalzinho to Satar by "a high ranking officer of the Presidential Guard", he said.
He recalled that once "Anibalzinho was in my cell and rang up Nyimpine, even before the judge's dispatch. So I believed him".
But the dispatch from Judge Paulino, in September 2001, was that there was sufficient evidence for a trial, and that meanwhile the suspects should remain in detention. Satar then asked Anibalzinho what had happened to his "guarantee", and "he said we would be freed by the Supreme Court".
But the Supreme Court confirmed the case would go to trial.
It was then that Anibalzinho threatened him, Satar claimed. "He showed me a knife. He said "stop writing, stop writing. We'll get out" (Satar had been firing off letters to the Attorney- General, Supreme Court judges, President chissano's office, the Human Rights League and other bodies, claiming that he was the victim of a conspiracy, aimed at extorting a million dollars from him).
Satar denied claims by other witnesses that his relations with Anibalzinho had deteriorated so much, that at one point Anibalzinho punched him.
But mobile phone records also work against Satar's defence case. Satar has claimed that the only time he ventured into the Rovuma Hotel was to visit the shopping centre on the ground floor. However, witnesses have placed him in conspiratorial meetings in one of the hotel's rooms at which murder was planned.
The court has copies of Satar's own mobile phone records, and Paulino noted that they showed "a lot of phone calls to the Rovuma Hotel. Why ?" Satar claimed that all these contacts were innocent calls to the boutique in the Rovuma shopping centre.
