Maputo — The Attorney-General's office on Monday ordered the detention of a senior police officer, Inspector Joaquim Pequenino, who was the officer in charge at the Maputo top security prison (commonly known as the B.O.) on 1 September, the day that Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), one of those charged with the murder of Mozambique's top investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso, was illicitly released.

According to a report in Tuesday's issue of the daily paper "Noticias", Pequenino was arrested after an interrogation by prosecutors, and now finds himself in a cell in the prison he once guarded.

Also on Monday, prosecutors questioned the director of the prison, Armando Ussufo, for the second time. So far, he has not been detained.

According to a report in the independent newsheet "Mediafax", one of the matters raised in the interrogation is the whereabouts of a mobile phone seized from Anibalzinho shortly before he disappeared from the jail.

In November and December, during the trial of the other five men charged with the murder of Cardoso, the prosecution made a point of displaying the mobile phones that had been seized from their cells. But Anibalzinho's phone was missing.

It seems that the prison guards never delivered the phone or the phone card to the public prosecutor's office or to the court, and now nobody knows where they are. Clearly the numbers stored on Anibalzinho's phone, and the record of calls made, might be of use in tracking the fugitive down. The prosecutors now say they have ended their interrogations - but still refuse to confirm or deny whether the Minister of the Interior himself, Almerino Manhenje, was among those questioned.

Ten other policemen who were already detained, including the commanders of the three platoons who each had one of the keys to the three padlocks on Anibalzinho's cell door, were questioned in December. It is believed that some of them mentioned Manhenje's name, and claimed that he gave the order for the illegal release.