2014-09-03 COURT ORDERS ASSASSINS RELEASE, PRISON REFUSES The Maputo top security prison has refused to implement an order from the Maputo city court granting provisional freedom to Momad Assife Abdul Satar (“Nini”), one of the three businessmen sentenced to lengthy prison terms in January 2003 for ordering the murder of the country’s foremost investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso. According to a report in Wednesday’s issue of the independent newsheet “Mediafax” (which was founded by Cardoso), the court order to release Satar was dated 1 September. But when a court official arrived at the prison with the order, signed by judge Aderito Malhope, on Tuesday morning, he found that the top managers of the prison were all absent. The prison officer on duty told him that he had orders from the prison management not to release Satar. Attempts to contact the prison management failed, since nobody was answering the phones. The attitude of the prison is all the more peculiar because, on 21 July, the prison management sent a written opinion to the court in favour of the provisional release of Satar. This opinion, which “Mediafax” publishes, is a truly extraordinary document which whitewashes Satar’s behaviour in prison. It says “he has good relations with the staff and the other prisoners, he is in charge of the prison library, and also of the prison mosque”. Satar also “participates in the activities programmed by the prison management, and shows repentance for what he has done”. This led the prison management to believe that, since there was nothing that was not in favour of releasing him on parole, he should be allowed to leave the prison. The note even claimed “we believe that, once at liberty, he will lead an honest and dignified life”. In general, prisoners who display good behaviour while in jail can be released on parole once they have served half their sentences. But Satar has not served half his sentence – for not only was he sentenced to 24 years for his part in the murder of Cardoso, but in a separate trial the Maputo City Court found him guilty of the enormous bank fraud which Cardoso had been investigating. This fraud involved the theft of the equivalent of 14 million US dollars from what was then the country’s largest bank, the BCM (Commercial Bank of Mozambique). He was sentenced to 14 years for his part in the BCM fraud. The city court should have rolled the murder and the fraud verdicts into a single sentence – this would not have been simply adding the two sentences together into 38 years, but it would have been longer than 24 years. Furthermore, Satar’s behaviour was far from exemplary. He was able to communicate with the outside world through mobile phones (forbidden inside jails), and the Public Prosecutor’s Office suspected that he was using these communications for involvement in other crimes, notably the wave of kidnappings that has shaken Mozambican cities since 2011. As for Satar’s “repentance”, to date he has not paid any of the compensation to the Cardoso family which the court ordered in 2003. The six men found guilty of the crime were ordered to pay 14 billion old meticais (588,000 US dollars at the exchange rate of the time) to Cardoso’s two children, Ibo and Milena, and 500 million old meticais to Cardoso’s driver, Carlos Manjate, who was severely injured in the attack. Of these sums, Nini Satar has not paid a penny. It is perhaps rather surprising that Satar is so eager to leave prison. The two other business figures who ordered the killing, his brother Ayob Abdul Satar and their co-conspirator Vicente Ramaya, were serving slightly lesser sentences, and were both released – only to be gunned down a few months later. Ramaya, the manager of the BCM branch where the fraud took place, was released on parole in January 2013, but in February this year he was shot dead in his car on the streets of Maputo. Ayob Satar was released on parole in March 2013. On 2 July this year he met his death in the Pakistani city of Karachi. He was shot as he was leaving a bank in Karachi, where he had gone to collect the equivalent of 5,000 US dollars in Pakistani rupees. Satar was approached by two men on a motorbike. According to a source in the Abdul Satar family, “They wanted money but he resisted. He was then shot and died on the spot”. Other members of the Abdul Satar family are also believed to be living in Pakistan – including another of Nini’s brothers Asslam Abdul Satar, and his parents, Abdul Karim Abdul Satar and Hawabay Abdul Latifo. All three had been involved in the BCM bank fraud. Perhaps in an attempt to prevent anything unpleasant happening to Nini Satar on his release, the Abdul Satar family hired bodyguards for him. Two vehicles belonging to a South African private security company were outside the jail, waiting for Satar to walk through the gates. If Satar is released, that will leave just one of Cardoso’s assassins behind bars - the head of the death squad that carried out the murder, Anibal dos Santos Junior (“Anibalzinho”). Since Anibalzinho, who is serving a 30 year sentence, has escaped from prison three times, and was described by the city court as “a habitual delinquent”, it seems unlikely that he will ever be released on parole. And when he is released, he will be deported to Portugal, since he holds a Portuguese passport.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 09:40:52 +0000
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