Maputo — Maputo money-lender Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini") on Monday once again tried to implicate Nyimpine Chissano, the oldest son of President Joaquim Chissano, in the November 2000 murder of Mozambique's top investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso. Giving a final statement to the Maputo City Court, Satar recalled that he had presented the court with post-dated cheques, signed by Nyimpine Chissano. Satar's story is that these cheques, totalling 1.29 billion meticais (over 50,000 US dollars), were security on a loan. He alleges that Chissano asked him for the money, but stipulated that it be paid to Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), the man who organised the death squad that murdered Cardoso.
Satar claims it was not until he met Anibalzinho in prison in 2001 that he realised the money had been used to pay for a contract killing.
"Nyimpine lied to this court when he said he only spoke to me once", said Satar. "There were several business deals between us".
He complained that the police had taken no notice when he first mentioned the involvement of Chissano. "I had a meeting a year before the trial (i.e. in November 2001), at which I told Antonio Frangoulis (former head of the Maputo Criminal Investigation Police) that Nyimpine was involved", said Satar.
"Why was no inquiry opened into what I said to Frangoulis ?" Satar denied any hand in the illicit release of Anibalzinho from the top security jail in September. "If I got him out, why did Anibalzinho send to Maputo a cassette incriminating me, and exonerating Nyimpine ?", he asked. (This cassette arrived in Maputo in December, and the judge, Augusto Paulino, refused to admit it as evidence. Copies are circulating, however, and it is known that in it Anibalzinho blames the Satar brothers for the murder of Cardoso.) "Everything was set up so that Anibalzinho could flee. It was not in my interests for him to escape", said Satar.
Satar's brother, Ayob, protested his innocence and said he had "no motive" for killing Cardoso. The prosecution has cited as a likely motive the fraud in which 144 billion meticais (14 million dollars at the exchange rate of the time) was stolen from what was then the country's largest bank, the BCM. The fraud used accounts opened in the name of members of the Abdul Satar family.
Ayob Satar said that, at the time the fraud was committed, "I didn't have close relations with the rest of my family". His parents and brothers fled the country, but he stayed.
The BCM's lawyer, Albano Silva, believes that this is just a family stratagem: Ayob did not open one of the fraudulent accounts, because his task was to look after the family's apparently legitimate business interests, if his relatives had to leave Mozambique.
Ayob insisted that "I never had any dispute with Carlos Cardoso or with any other journalist".
The third man accused of ordering the assassination, former BCM branch manager Vicente Ramaya, also claimed he had no quarrel with Cardoso, and that "Cardoso never did me any harm at all".
But he did admit participating in the BCM fraud, though tried to put the blame on people higher up the bank hierarchy. "I did not participate in the fraud as a citizen, but as the manager of the Sommerschield branch and I carried out the instructions of my superiors", Ramaya said. "I know who got the money and who are the real beneficiaries of the fraud".
The two confessed murderers, Carlitos Rashid, and Manuel Fernandes, were also given the opportunity to address the court, but said they had no further comment.
The presiding judge, Augusto Paulino, has announced that the court's verdict will be given on 31 January.
