(MISA/IFEX) – Bowing to public and media pressure, Mozambican Interior Minister Almerinho Manhenje finally announced that arrests were made in connection with the murder of Carlos Cardoso, the country’s best known journalist, the South African Press Agency (SAPA) reported last week. Cardoso, editor of the independent newsletter “Metical”, was ambushed and gunned down in a […]
(MISA/IFEX) – Bowing to public and media pressure, Mozambican Interior Minister
Almerinho Manhenje finally announced that arrests were made in connection with the murder of Carlos Cardoso, the country’s best known journalist, the South African Press Agency (SAPA) reported last week.
Cardoso, editor of the independent newsletter “Metical”, was ambushed and gunned down in a Maputo street in November 2000.
The minister had not made a single public statement since Cardoso’s murder until his Wednesday 28 February 2001 press conference, which lasted less than five minutes. He refused to take any questions.
Manhenje told reporters that “some detentions have been made, and materials used directly and indirectly in the crime have been apprehended.” He declined to identify those arrested or to say how many people had been detained. Nor did he specify what materials had been seized.
The minister said the Mozambican authorities had worked with police from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Swaziland on the investigation, and had also received assistance from the British police. “Two investigators from the British police worked with us for several days,” he said. A source in the British high commission in Maputo said the two investigators were brought in at a very late stage. The two were in Maputo for ten days earlier in February.
Manhenje’s comments came soon after a lawyer representing Cardoso’s widow denounced the police investigation as a failure.
Background Information
On 22 February, MISA reported that Lucinda Cruz, the lawyer acting for Cardoso’s widow, Nina Berg, had accused Mozambican police of “non-investigation” and demonstrating gross incompetence in the investigation of the murder of slain Mozambican journalist Cardoso.
At that time, three months after Cardoso’s assassination on 22 November, there had been no sign of any serious police investigation to track down his killers.
