(MISA/IFEX) – One of the six men accused of murdering Mozambique’s best known journalist, Carlos Cardoso, has escaped from Maputo’s top security jail. On 2 September 2002, a police spokesman told Cardoso’s widow, Nina Berg, that the suspect, Anibal Antonio dos Santos Junior (better known by his underworld nickname of Anibalzinho), had escaped from the […]
(MISA/IFEX) – One of the six men accused of murdering Mozambique’s best known journalist, Carlos Cardoso, has escaped from Maputo’s top security jail.
On 2 September 2002, a police spokesman told Cardoso’s widow, Nina Berg, that the suspect, Anibal Antonio dos Santos Junior (better known by his underworld nickname of Anibalzinho), had escaped from the prison at about 11:00 p.m. (local time) on the night of 1 September. No further details on the escape are available at present.
The trial of Anibalzinho and the five other accused is expected to start in the next few weeks, following unsuccessful appeals by the defence lawyers of the case going to trial. Judge Augusto Paulino must still set a trial date.
Background Information
Cardoso, editor of the independent newssheet “Metical” and a former director of Mozambique’s state news agency AIM, was assassinated on 22 November 2000. After a vigorous public campaign by Cardoso’s family, friends and colleagues, the police arrested suspects in February and March 2001.
With the help of the Swazi police, Anibalzinho and a second suspect, Manuel Fernandes, were arrested in Swaziland and brought back to Maputo. It was discovered that Anibalzinho is a Portuguese citizen, but was also using a forged Mozambican passport under the name Carlos Pinto da Cruz.
A story published at the time by the weekly newspaper “Savana” noted that Anibalzinho had good police connections arising from his business as a trafficker of luxury vehicles, which he would bring in from South Africa and resell in Maputo.
In March 2001, four other people were picked up. Carlos Rachid Cassamo was alleged, along with Anibalzinho and Fernandes, to be a member of the hit squad that carried out the killing. Former bank manager Vicente Ramaya and wealthy businessmen Ayob Abdul Satar and Momade Assife Abdul Satar were arrested as the “moral authors” of the crime. They allegedly paid the assassins to murder Cardoso.
Ramaya and members of the Abdul Satar family were the main suspects in a huge bank fraud case in 1996, which saw the equivalent of US$14 million siphoned out of the Commercial Bank of Mozambique (BCM) on the eve of its privatisation.
Cardoso had followed the case tenaciously, repeatedly demanding that those who swindled the BCM be brought to justice. He also investigated other shady business affairs of the Abdul Satar family, including loan sharking and illegal wire-tapping.
Since March 2001, all six suspects in Cardoso’s murder have been detained in a top security jail, while investigations continue. Their lawyers have used every device available to delay a trial, but eventually ran out of room for manoeuvre. Before Anibalzinho’s escape, it was generally expected that the trial would begin in September or October.
Anibalzinho’s escape has demonstrated the truth of the accusations levied against the country’s prisons by Attorney General Joaquim Madeira earlier in 2002. Reporting to Parliament on 6 March, Madeira declared, “Inmates escape from almost all the country’s prisons, sometimes in a spectacular fashion. Preliminary investigations indicate that these escapes enjoyed the connivance of prison guards, or were at least facilitated by their inexcusable negligence.”
