Maputo — Lucinda Cruz, lawyer for the family of murdered journalist Carlos Cardoso, on Monday stressed that there is more than sufficient evidence to convict Vicente Ramaya, and the two brothers Ayob and Momade Abdul Satar, of ordering the assassination.
Summing up for the private prosecution in the Cardoso murder trial, Cruz stood by the testimony of Oswaldo Muianga ("Dudu").
His account of conspiratorial meetings in the Rovuma hotel "established the link" between those who ordered the crime and those who carried it out.
The defence lawyers have tried to discredit Muianga, who has changed his story several times, and deny that any meetings were held at the Rovuma. But if that were the case, asked Cruz, why had the defendants and their relatives been so anxious to intimidate and bribe Muianga and his family ?
Why had the Satar brothers telephoned Muianga from prison, sometimes threatening him, sometimes offering bribes, "if Muianga did not know, and had never heard about the plans to kill Carlos Cardoso ?" She noted that immediately after Muianga made his first statements, in March 2001, the defence had accused him of having a criminal record (which was not true), and demanded that he be arrested. The reason they reacted in this way, she suggested, was precisely because meetings had taken place at the Rovuma hotel, and had discussed murdering Cardoso. Faced with threatening phone calls from Momade Satar and Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), the head of the death squad, Muianga pretended that he had lost the power of speech.
But in early 2002, he withdrew his earlier statement, and claimed he had been incited to incriminate the Satars by Gary Rouper, the former manager of the Polana Hotel, which owed the Satars money.
"This retraction was obviously false", said Cruz. "Being false, and only benefitting the defendants, it could only have been obtained through the interference or influence of the defendants - as was later proved" (Muianga's mother, Fatima Razaco, told the court how she had pressured her son to sign the retraction, after receiving bribes from Satar's relatives.) The pressures put on Muianga and his mother convinced Cruz that his initial statement of March 2001 "is at least partly true", and that there were indeed meetings at the Rovuma.
"Muianga knows that Carlos Cardoso was spoken of at those meetings", she said. "That's why, on the day of the murder, as soon as he knew, who did he telephone - none other than Anibalzinho and Momade Satar ! And later that night, as he admits, he went to meet with Anibalzinho".
The defence has objected that another prosecution witness, Rohit Kumar, is a confessed murderer (he killed a shop owner in 1997, but has never stood trial for the crime, due to police incompetence or complicity).
Rohit Kumar was apparently the first person the Satars tried to recruit to murder Cardoso. He told the court that in 1999, Momade Satar, in the presence of his brother Ayob, asked him if he could arrange assassins to dispose of Cardoso. He turned the job down because the Satars did not offer him enough money.
Of course, Kumar is a criminal, Cruz said - that was the whole point. Satar had met him in jail in 1997 (when he was briefly imprisoned for his part in the BCM fraud, before corrupt attorneys secured his release). Satar knew he was a killer, and that was why he had tried to recruit him. Calling him a murderer simply made Kumar's testimony more credible. You don't hire honest, clean people with no criminal records to carry out a contract killing, Cruz pointed out.
"If you want to hire someone to do a job", she said, "logic and intelligence dictate that you hire someone who has already shown that he knows how to do it".
Cruz also pointed to the evidence from the records of the mobile phone company M-Cel. These records proved the links between Anibalzinho, the Satars and Ramaya.
The initial phone contacts between Momade Satar and Anibalzinho occurred in July 2000: Muianga overheard Satar telling Anibalzinho that there was "an inconvenience" to be removed before dealing with "the first matter discussed".
The "first matter" was the planned assassination of lawyer Albano Silva, the prosecution argues, while "the inconvenience" was Cardoso.
Phone contacts were frequent between the defendants - notably on the day of the murder (22 November 2000), and the day after, including calls late at night. Cruz argued that the main target of the Satars and Ramaya was Albano Silva, the lawyer for what was then the country's largest bank, the BCM. But when the attorneys who had been protecting the Satars lost their jobs in July 2000, after President Joaquim Chissano appointed a new Attorney-General, Joaquim Madeira, the Satars changed their plans.
"They knew that first they had to get rid of Carlos Cardoso", she said. "To regain any impunity, they had to eliminate the only person who could stand up to them. Because he had a credible newspaper, because nobody could buy him, and because his voice was heard at all levels".
"So they had to guarantee that Carlos Cardoso would not inconvenience them any more", Cruz added. "So they had to kill him. But they made a mistake: after his death, Carlos Cardoso has inconvenienced them much more".
Cruz asked the court to convict all six defendants on the count of first degree murder. She also demanded that the defendants compensate Cardoso's two children, 13 year old Ibo and seven year old Milena, to the sum of 14 billion meticais (568,000 US dollars).
Helder Matlaba, the lawyer for Cardoso's driver, Carlos Manjate, who survived the attack, but was severely injured and is currently unable to work, also asked the court to convict all six defendants. He is seeking compensation of 500 million meticais for his client.
