Maputo — Maputo money lender Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), one of those accused or ordering the assassination of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, has been assisting the families of two of his fellow defendants.
Citing sources in the state security service (SISE), the latest issue of the independent weekly "Zambeze" said that Satar has bought houses for two members of the death squad that murdered Cardoso - Carlitos Rachid (the man who admits to pulling the trigger), and Manuel Fernandes.
The SISE sources say provision of the houses was part of a deal struck by Satar and the two confessed assassins shortly before the murder trial began. It is certainly noticeable that, in the evidence they gave in November, neither Rashid nor Fernandes had much to say about Satar: both blamed the murder on the third member of the hit team, the fugitive Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), and implicated businessman Nyimpine Chissano, the oldest son of President Joaquim Chissano.
Rashid claimed he knew nothing about either Nini Satar, or his brother and co-accused, Ayob. Fernandes made an oblique reference to Satar, declaring "Anibalzinho said Nyimpine had given orders to Nini to pay the money". This is, essentially, Satar's story too: he says Nyimpine asked him for a loan, to be paid to Anibalzinho, and he complied, not realising that the payment was for a contract killing.
But in his initial confession, in 2001, Fernandes had directly implicated Satar in the crime, claiming that Satar had delivered the AK-47 used in the murder. In November, this crucial detail disappeared, and he claimed that it was Anibalzinho who already had the AK-47 in the boot of the car. Fernandes now claimed he had been "tortured" into making the original confession by the then head of the Maputo branch of the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC), Antonio Frangoulis. On closer questioning, this "torture" turned out to have been late night interrogation.
"They wouldn't let me sleep", he claimed. "I incriminated people (including Nini Satar) because I wanted to get out".
The change in testimony is certainly useful for Nini Satar, and the use of a bribe to persuade Fernandes to change his story cannot be ruled out - particularly since it has been proved beyond doubt that Satar and his relatives bribed other witnesses.
In addition to the houses, Satar is also paying 15 million meticais (about 530 US dollars) a month to the families of Rashid and Fernandes, the SISE sources claimed. The house for Fernandes is supposedly in Zona Verde, near the Benfica-Nova primary school, in the city of Matola, and "Zambeze" decided to check the story out. In Zona Verde, the first person they asked said he knew where Fernandes' wife was living, and could take the reporters there. So a photo of the house is published in "Zambeze".
At the house, the reporters found a woman sitting in the yard who said she was the mother of Fernandes' wife, and that she had been living there for the past two months.
She declined to say how the house had been purchased.
"That's with my daughter", she said. But they could not speak with Fernandes' wife, since she had gone into Maputo.
As they left the house, a man, aged about 40, came out, and threatened them. "You'd better see what you're doing", he told the reporters. "I'm very dangerous. Don't play with me".
The SISE sources were sure that Satar had also bought a house for Rashid's family, but were not yet sure where it was located.
