Once again, the convicted murderer, and now convicted fraudster, Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), is being treated as a celebrity in some of the Mozambican press.
What must be a candidate for the worst piece of journalism of the year is an "exclusive" interview with Satar, published across almost an entire page of the latest issue of the weekly paper "Zambeze", complete with a large and rather flattering photograph of this criminal.
This interview was obtained immediately after the Maputo City Court sentenced Satar to 14 years imprisonment for his part in the 1996 fraud that cost the country's largest bank, the BCM, the equivalent of 14 million US dollars.
Since Satar was already serving a 24 year sentence for the murder of Mozambique's foremost investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso, one might have expected the police to whisk him back to his cell, immediately the trial was over.
Not at all ! Satar was allowed to mingle with the crowd, giving impromptu interviews to favoured journalists, and shouting insults at those (such as myself) who do not regard him as a superstar.
Satar's strategy in the interview is transparent. He is accepting some responsibility for the BCM fraud, in the hope that his appeal against the sentence for the more serious crime, the Cardoso murder, will be successful.
Part of this strategy is to compare the two judges, praising judge Achirafo Abdul who tried the BCM case, while vilifying Augusto Paulino, the judge in the murder trial.
Achirafo himself resents any attempt to use his courtroom to insult other judges: during the trial, he interrupted Satar's brother, Ayob, when he launched into a tirade against Paulino.
In the "Zambeze" interview, Nini Satar praised Achirafo as "just and consistent". The court's ruling, he said, "proves that judge Achirafo did not receive any political pressure to condemn innocent people".
But in the murder trial, he claimed there was no "convincing evidence" against either himself or his brother. Satar must be hoping we have all forgotten his confession that he paid large sums of money to Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), the man who led the death squad that murdered Cardoso - though he claimed he did not know the money was for a contract killing, and that he was acting at the request of businessman Nyimpine Chissano, oldest son of President Joaquim Chissano.
Satar slandered Paulino, claiming that he was following outside instructions when he found the Satar brothers guilty of murder. "Those in power ordered judge Augusto Paulino to sentence us unjustly", he claimed.
Adding a further insult he claimed that Paulino was "an inexperienced judge", and that he was rewarded for his verdict in the murder trial by promotion to the post of president judge in the Maputo Provincial Court.
But at the time, in early 2003, Paulino's handling of the case was widely applauded, as striking a blow against organised crime, a blow that would help rebuild a credible judicial system.
As for contrasting the two judges, Achirafo has never made any secret of his friendship with, and admiration for Paulino. Despite admitting his part in the fraud, Satar said he was appealing against the sentence, particular the order that those who defrauded the bank must repay the money.
"My personal fortune has nothing to do with the fraud", he claimed. "I always practiced credit activities, a fact which was made duly clear by the statements of the people to whom I lent money".
Satar did indeed lend money - at extortionate interest rates, the activity usually known as loansharking. This activity was entirely unregistered and illegal. But in order to lend money, you need some to start with: the only credible source for Satar's initial capital is the money he stole from the BCM at the tender age of 22.
Satar repeated the story that the real beneficiaries of the fraud were members of the BCM board of directors. This claim was made throughout the trial by Satar and his co-accused, former BCM branch manager Vicente Ramaya. But tall tales of unloading suitcases full of money at directors' homes at dead of night do not count as evidence. So far nothing to substantiate Satar's accusations against the former directors has come to light.
Achirafo found Ayob Satar not guilty of the fraud, and some of the media seemed to think this was the most important aspect of the verdict. "Ayob innocent !", shrieked the sensationalist weekly "Fim de Semana". "Ayob Satar and nine others acquitted", headlined "Zambeze".
From such coverage, one might imagine that the whole trial hinged on Ayob Satar. In fact, during the months of trial proceedings the spotlight was rarely on Ayob: the number one accused was Ramaya, and the greater part of the trial was taken up with Ramaya's attempts to deny blame, to allege that the fraudulent cheques were guaranteed, and to incriminate other bank officials, notably the former directors.
Those who defend Ayob make the huge leap of logic that, if he was innocent of the BCM fraud, then he could not have been involved in the Cardoso murder.
This argument can only be made by people who weren't listening to Achirafo's ruling. First, Achirafo was at pains to stress that an acquittal does not mean that the person acquitted did not commit the crime - merely that the court has doubts, and acts on the principle "it is better to let a guilty man go free than send an innocent one to jail".
Secondly, the court did find it proven that Ayob had covered up the fraud. 33 cheques that were to have gone into the fraudulent accounts arrived in Maputo after the fraud was discovered and the accounts closed down. They were given to Ayob and never seen again.
This looks like the destruction of evidence. Ayob denied ever receiving the cheques - but there was a witness, and the court found that he did indeed try to conceal the fraud. He was not sentenced for this, however, because under the Mozambican Penal Code, you cannot commit the crime of concealment, if the people you are covering up for are close relatives, such as brothers. So, although Ayob may not have been directly involved in the fraud when the dud cheques were deposited (from 26 March to 9 August 1996), he certainly knew about it by September, when he received the 33 cheques, and when his parents and his two brothers (Nini and Asslam) had fled the country.
If Ayob was prepared to protect his brothers in September 1996 by disposing of the 33 cheques, there is nothing illogical in supposing that he would have been prepared to continue protecting them, including in plotting the removal of the journalist who was campaigning to bring the BCM case to trial.
Furthermore, by November 2000, when Cardoso was assassinated, he had been probing other aspects of the Satars' activities, including illegal wire-tapping, and Nini's loansharking out of an office in Unicambios, the exchange bureau owned by Ayob.
The Satars had good reason to fear Cardoso. In itself, that merely gives a plausible motive: it does not prove they committed the murder. To assess that, the evidence in the murder case must be evaluated.
This is the task of the Supreme Court in hearing the Satars' appeals. It must look, not at the events of 1996 covered in last week's BCM verdict, but at the events of 2000 covered by Paulino's verdict. It is the Cardoso murder case file, not the BCM file, that must determine the outcome of the appeals.
Fonte: AIM
