mozambique: CARDOSO MURDER: SUSPECT ESCAPES FROM TOP SECURITY JAIL

One of the six men accused of murdering Mozambique's best known journalist, Carlos Cardoso, has escaped from Maputo's top security jail. A police spokesman confirmed on Monday to 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 23.00 on Sunday night. No further details of the escape are yet available.

CARDOSO MURDER: SUSPECT ESCAPES FROM TOP SECURITY JAIL

Joseph Hanlon

Maputo, 2 Sept (AIM) - One of the six men accused of murdering
Mozambique's best known journalist, Carlos Cardoso, has escaped
from Maputo's top security jail.
A police spokesman confirmed on Monday to 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 23.00 on Sunday night. No
further details of the escape are yet available.
The trial of Anibalzinho and the five other accused had been
expected some time in the next few weeks. The defence lawyers had
lost appeals against the case going to trial, and all that
remained was for the judge, Augusto Paulino, to set a date.
Cardoso, editor of the independent newsheet "Metical" and a
former director of 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 inside Swaziland and
brought back to Maputo. It was discovered that Anibalzinho is a
Portuguese citizen, but was also using a forged Mozambican
passport in the name of Carlos Pinto da Cruz.
A story published at the time by the weekly paper "Savana"
noted that Anibalzinho had good police connections arising from
his business as a trafficker in luxury vehicles, which he would
bring in from South Africa and resell in Maputo.
"Savana"'s sources claimed that Anibalzinho had "done a
variety of favours to police chiefs, including the offer of
luxury cars and sums of money. Several high ranking police
officers have Anibalzinho's number on their mobile phone menus,
and speak with him frequently".
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 the 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 the case of a huge bank fraud in 1996, which saw the
equivalent of 14 million US dollars siphoned out of the
Commercial Bank of Mozambique (BCM) on the eve of its
privatisation.
Cardoso had followed this case tenaciously, repeatedly
demanding that those who swindled the BCM be brought to justice.
He also investigated the other shady businesses of the Abdul
Satars, including loansharking and illegal wire-tapping.
Since March 2001, all six suspects have been in the top
security jail, while investigations continue. Their lawyers have
used every device available to delay any 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 has demonstrated the truth of the accusations
levied against the country's prisons by Attorney General Joaquim
Madeira earlier this year.
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".
(AIM)