Maputo — Confessed assassins Carlitos Rashid and Manuel Fernandes brought little new to the Carlos Cardoso murder trial on Thursday, when they were questioned by the court for the second time.

Both thrust the blame for the crime on the third member of the death squad, Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), who was illicitly released from the Maputo top security prison on 1 September, and whose whereabouts are currently unknown.

The division of labour on the day of the murder, 22 November 2000, was that Anibalzinho drove the car, Rashid fired the fatal shots, and Fernandes kept a lookout for any police presence.

Rashid said that the initial plan had been to use two men with guns - himself and Miguel Chamusse, but at the last moment, Chamusse (who died last year in South Africa) was replaced by the unarmed Fernandes.

Rashid said that he, Anibalzinho and Chamusse had followed Cardoso from the office of his paper "Metical" to his home "four or five times".

Asked why they had not assassinated him on one of these earlier occasions, Rashid replied "Anibalzinho said "today won't do". He was always saying that".

Rashid changed his earlier evidence according to which he had never fired a gun in his life before the day of the murder.

That claim had been demolished by a South African ballistics expert, who told the court the assassination was carried out by someone experienced in handling firearms.

Now Rashid said it was only that particularly type of gun, the AK-47, that he had not fired before. He had experience with the G-3 rifle, and with his father's hunting gun, a Mauser.

But he continued to insist that he had never been a member either of the army or of the police. "In the first interrogation, I said I was a policeman, in order to avoid torture", he said, since he believed the police would not maltreat someone whom they believed had once been in their ranks.

He neglected to mention that, when questioned by "Metical" reporters immediately after his arrest in March 2001, he said he was a deserter from the armed forces.

Rashid continued to insist that the man standing behind Anibalzinho, and paying for the murder was Nyimpine Chissano, oldest son of President Joaquim Chissano. He recalled that in prison "Anibalzinho said that Nyimpine was working on our release".

He was angered that in court "my boss called me a wretch".

He was referring to the incident in December when Nyimpine Chissano, asked if he recognised Rashid, replied "I don't know this wretched individual".

Neither Rashid nor Fernandes showed anything approaching repentance. Indeed, the only thing they seemed sorry about was that they had not received the money Anibalzinho had promised.

Rashid's casual attitude towards the murder repelled the presiding judge, Augusto Paulino, who remarked "The defendant speaks in such an off-hand way, as if death were just a toy".