**Updates IFEX alerts of 17, 10, 9, 7 and 6 March. 22 February and 13 January 2000, 17 December, 30, 25, 16, 3 and 2 November, 28, 22, 20, 19 and 18 October 1999** (CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a 20 March 2000 CPJ press release: ANGOLA: MARQUES’ JUDGE HAS NO LEGAL TRAINING, SOURCES SAY […]
**Updates IFEX alerts of 17, 10, 9, 7 and 6 March. 22 February and 13 January 2000, 17 December, 30, 25, 16, 3 and 2 November, 28, 22, 20, 19 and 18 October 1999**
(CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a 20 March 2000 CPJ press release:
ANGOLA: MARQUES’ JUDGE HAS NO LEGAL TRAINING, SOURCES SAY
New York, March 20, 2000 — Judge Joaquim de Abreu Cangato, who has been presiding over the trial of Angolan free-lance journalist Rafael Marques since it began in early March, has no legal background, according to CPJ’s sources in Luanda.
Cangato, a former member of the Angolan secret police, has never studied law or any related discipline, CPJ’s sources say.
Marques and two co-defendants have been charged with criminal defamation for writing critically about President José Eduardo Dos Santos. His trial resumes tomorrow in the Provincial Criminal Court of Luanda.
The trial was adjourned on March 10, after lawyers for Marques’ co-defendant Aguiar Dos Santos, publisher of the independent newspaper Agora, argued that they had not been given sufficient time to prepare their client’s defense. Dos Santos, who is not related to President Dos Santos, failed to appear at the hearings. The third defendant in this case is Antonio José Freitas, an Agora staff reporter.
Police arrested Rafael Marques on October 16, 1999, at his Luanda home, and charged him with defamation in connection with an article titled “The Lipstick of Dictatorship,” which ran under his byline in the July 3, 1999, edition of Agora.
In the article, Marques claimed that President Dos Santos was responsible for “the destruction of the country… [and] for the promotion of incompetence, embezzlement and corruption as political and social values.” Marques also referred to the president as a “dictator.”
If convicted, Marques faces from two to eight years in prison.
