TORONTO STAR - Sep. 26, 2004
KATHERINE MUICK
Anibal dos Santos, sentenced to 28 years in the slaying of a Mozambican journalist, was arrested at Pearson airport in May.
Convicted Mozambican death-squad leader fled to Toronto
Claim for status in Canada sparks outrage in two countries
MICHELLE SHEPHARD AND NICHOLAS KEUNG
STAFF REPORTERS
A convicted assassin who led the death squad that killed Mozambique's top investigative journalist is seeking refuge in Canada, sparking outrage in the African country that has been gripped by his story for almost four years.
Anibal dos Santos was convicted as the leader of a death squad that executed journalist Carlos Cardoso on Nov. 22, 2000, and sentenced to 28 years. After escaping the high-security prison where he was serving his sentence in Maputo, Mozambique, dos Santos fled to Toronto this May.
He was arrested at Pearson International Airport and immediately taken into custody.
Canadian officials have never stated that dos Santos is being held here, but his former lawyer confirmed in an interview with the Star the 33-year-old has made a refugee claim on the grounds he was wrongly convicted in Mozambique.
Last week, dos Santos appeared at a detention review hearing to seek bail, something he is required to undergo every 30 days while being held in a maximum-security prison in Lindsay, Ont.
His refugee claim has enraged a group of Canadians, many with ties to Mozambique through relief work, who are now fighting to make dos Santos' case public.
Refugee cases are almost always heard in private to protect the rights of the claimant, but applications to open the hearings have been granted on rare occasions if it's determined making the evidence public would not jeopardize safety or the fairness of the case.
In a letter to the Immigration Refugee Board requesting the dos Santos case be opened, 37 Canadian applicants wrote: "It would be a sorry chapter in the history of Canadian immigration if the convicted killer of Mozambique's greatest defender of human rights and press freedom were to be granted refugee status in Canada by using the liberal and humane immigration regulations of which we are so justly proud."
"The thing is, we all support the process of refugees coming to Canada and this devalues that," says one of the 37 applicants, Greg Keast, a Toronto engineer who spent seven years volunteering in Mozambique.
"He's a convicted murderer, convicted in an open trial, ... trying to take advantage of our liberal system."
Keast called the 2002 trial where dos Santos and five other men were convicted in Cardoso's death Mozambique's "trial of the century" and said his story is closely followed there.
His escape to Canada is not the first time the man, better known in Mozambique as "Anibalzinho," has broken out of jail, fuelling suspicion about high-powered connections to his case.
On Sept. 1, 2002, two months before his trial, dos Santos managed to escape, but he was later tracked down in South Africa. Convicted in absentia, he was returned to serve his sentence. Dos Santos is currently appealing his case.
"People here are very angry. Angry that for a second time he was allowed to escape and we want to know how he got to Canada, who is helping him, how he got a passport," Paul Fauvet, a Mozambique journalist and co-author of a biography of Cardoso, said in a telephone interview.
"There are lots of unanswered questions about this."
Some of those questions are directed at the highest powers in Mozambique. When Cardoso was killed, he was investigating the siphoning of $14 million (U.S.) from the state-run Commercial Bank of Mozambique and probing connections with the country's ruling Frelimo party.
This June, in a seven-hour judgment that was broadcast live in Mozambique, seven people were convicted in the banking fraud scheme. But suspicion still hangs over the possible involvement of Nyimpine Chissano, son of President Joaquim Chissano, in both the bank scheme and the ordering of Cardoso's murder, and the investigation continues. Dos Santos could be a key witness implicating the president's son.
Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, an immigration lawyer who twice represented dos Santos at detention hearings this summer, confirmed his former client has made a refugee claim in Canada on the grounds that he'd face persecution by the Mozambique government.
"It's a mystery how someone could escape from a maximum security jail twice just like that and managed to leave the country with a valid passport, (without) any colluding from any authorities," Hamalengwa said in an interview. "You just don't escape from those prisons like that."
Hamalengwa said dos Santos had valid passports from both Mozambique and Portugal when he was apprehended at Pearson in May, but it's not known whether he had dual citizenship.
Hamalengwa called dos Santos a "low-level foot soldier" in the murder plot and said returning him to Mozambique would put his life at risk.
There is no official extradition agreement between Canada and Mozambique. But Antonio Rodrigues, first secretary at Mozambique's embassy in Washington, said last week his country's government had submitted a request for dos Santos' extradition "through the appropriate Canadian channels."
Dos Santos did not respond to a request for an interview in custody.
For Cardoso's widow, lawyer Nina Berg, it's a sad irony that dos Santos is applying as a refugee after she and her husband had devoted so much of their careers to the plight of refugees in Mozambique.
"For me, and the family, the most important thing is that he serves his sentence for what he did. I don't think there is any doubt that he was part of this assassination. ... He organized the squad that killed Carlos," Berg said in a telephone interview from Mozambique.
"It would surprise me if Canada would grant him refugee status and if they do I think it's absolutely appalling. He is sentenced for the worst kind of murder, being contracted to kill somebody."
She described her husband as a tireless fighter for the poor and said his death had left a gaping hole in investigative journalism in Mozambique.
