Immigration hearings in north America do not usually elicit much interest in Mozambique - but on Tuesday Mozambican journalists will be anxious for news from one such hearing in the Canadian city of Toronto.
For on Tuesday convicted murderer Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho") is due to appear before a member of the Immigration Refugee Board to plead his case for political asylum.
Anibalzinho is the man who led the death squad that assassinated Mozambique's top investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso, on 22 November 2000.
The Maputo City Court sentenced him to a jail term of 28 years and six months for this murder. Giving his verdict, on 31 January 2003, judge Augusto Paulino described Anibalzinho as "a habitual delinquent".
Anibalzinho escaped from the Maputo top security prison on 9 May this year - clearly with high level complicity. He was spirited out of the country, provided with a false passport and an air ticket, and turned up at Toronto International Airport on 21 May, where he was detained. Now the "habitual delinquent" is pleading for refugee status, much to the disgust of Mozambican journalists.
According to sources in Canada, Anibalzinho will be represented at the hearing by a lawyer named Hamalenga Munyonzwe, a man who, while the war of destabilisation was raging in Mozambique, was successful in obtaining asylum for an official of the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels.
Cardoso's widow, Nina Berg, told AIM she wanted to see the extradition of her husband's murderer "solved as soon as possible".
She believed that the Canadian authorities were not deliberately delaying, but merely following their own legal procedures. Nonetheless, "it's important the extradition should be dealt with quickly", she said. "They can deport him without looking further into the refugee question. If they regard him as a criminal, they can deport him at once".
The Mozambican journalists union (SNJ) wants Anibalzinho returned to Maputo as soon as possible. "Clearly this man is not a political refugee, he's a common criminal", SNJ General Secretary Hilario Matusse told AIM. "He's been sentenced and we want him to serve his sentence here. We urge the Canadians to send him back - and I think that's the feeling of most Mozambicans".
Matusse noted that even President Joaquim Chissano has remarked that there are several crimes that Anibalzinho "could help clarify".
These crimes include, not only the Cardoso murder, but also the 1999 attempted assassination of lawyer Albano Silva, and the 1996 murder of Swiss anthropologist Nicole Besenczon.
As for Anibalzinho's claim that if he is returned to Maputo, he will be killed, Matusse remarked "Perhaps he should say why he believes that. What does he know that could lead to him being killed ?" Salomao Moyana, chairman of the Mozambican branch of the press freedom body MISA (Media Institute of Southern Africa), agreed that Anibalzinho "must be returned here".
He was worried at the time the extradition was taking. "At first we thought that the Canadians just wanted to know if he had been sentenced - and the government says it has sent the sentence to Canada", said Moyana.
As the weeks passed MISA had become concerned at the delays.
"This case should have been dealt with speedily - but now they're going through all these procedures and it's taking much longer than we hoped", said Moyana. He added that MISA leadership would be seeking a meeting with the Canadian High Commission in Maputo to express its concern, and to request that the assassin "be sent back to Mozambique, without any further complications".
MISA also wanted to know whether the Mozambican government had indeed provided the Canadian authorities with all the relevant documentation concerning Anibalzinho.
One of Cardoso's close friends and colleagues, Fernando Lima, chairman of the board of the independent media company Mediacoop, told AIM he feared the extradition might drag on for much longer.
He thought it was important to bring Anibalzinho back to Maputo so that he could testify in ongoing criminal cases - including the case that has been opened into his own escape. "We want to know how he escaped and fled the country", said Lima, "and we want to know about any others involved in ordering the death of Carlos Cardoso".
Those sentenced for ordering the killing are the business brothers Momade Assife and Ayob Satar, and former bank manager Vicente Ramaya. But there have long been suspicions that others were involved.
A second case file on the murder has been opened, in which one of the suspects is businessman Nyimpine Chissano, son of President Joaquim Chissano. Anibalzinho escaped the day before he was to be questioned by prosecutors in charge of this case file.
As for Anibalzinho's alleged fear that he will be killed, Lima remarked "The Mozambican legal and prison systems have many defects - notably the fact that Anibalzinho was able to escape in the first place".
Marcelo Mosse, a close collaborator with Cardoso in the last years of his life, and co-author of his biography, was concerned that whatever Anibalzinho has in his head should be made public.
"The Canadian authorities should ask him about his role in the murder, and about other people he knows were involved", Mosse told AIM. "They should ask who was responsible for his escape.
That escape involved lots of resources - transport, passports, money. He has to reveal this".
Mosse added that it was not enough for the Canadians to pass on any information Anibalzinho may give them to the Mozambican authorities. "It must be made available to the Mozambican public", he stressed. "We need transparency in this case".
Mosse agreed that the ideal destination for Anibalzinho was his prison cell in Maputo - but feared that, having already escaped twice, he might escape for a third time.
Fonte: AIM
