Mozambique: ‘Anibalzinho’ freed after serving full sentence in journalist Carlos Cardoso murder case – SERNAP

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Mozambique: ‘Anibalzinho’ freed after serving full sentence in journalist Carlos Cardoso murder case – SERNAP

12:53 CAT | 09 Oct 2025

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File photo: MzNews

Aníbal dos Santos Jr, known as “Anibalzinho”, one of the men convicted for the murder of Mozambican journalist Carlos Cardoso, was released on Wednesday after serving the full sentence handed down to him in 2003, a source from the National Penitentiary Service (SERNAP) told Lusa.

“We confirm that citizen Aníbal dos Santos Jr has been released after serving his sentence in full,” the SERNAP source said.

“Anibalzinho”, as he is known, was convicted of orchestrating and carrying out the killing of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso in November 2000, a crime that shocked Mozambique and the world. Cardoso had been investigating banking fraud at the time of his death.

His time in detention — Anibalzinho was sentenced to 24 years in 2003, while already in custody — was marked by two escapes from the Machava Maximum Security Special Penitentiary, about 15 kilometres from central Maputo, in 2002 and 2004. He made it as far as South Africa and later Canada, where he was re-arrested and extradited back to Mozambique.

In 2006, Aníbal dos Santos Jr made another unsuccessful attempt to escape, sawing through the bars of his cell on one occasion. He made three escape attempts in just five months.

Earlier this year, in March, SERNAP confirmed the death in prison of Nini Satar, another man convicted in the same case, though the cause of death was not disclosed.

“The National Penitentiary Service regrets what happened and continues to follow the ongoing proceedings to determine the circumstances of his death,” the institution said at the time in a statement.

Nini Satar was serving the remainder of a 24-year prison sentence handed down in 2003 for the murder of journalist Carlos Cardoso.

The court found that Satar, a businessman, and his co-defendants had ordered the killing of Carlos Cardoso because of the journalist’s investigation into bank fraud at the former Banco Comercial de Moçambique (BCM), then considered the biggest financial scandal in the country’s history.

Satar was released on parole in 2014 but returned to prison in 2018 after being repatriated from Thailand, where he had been living, having violated the deadline set by Mozambican courts for his temporary departure for medical treatment.

He again came into conflict with the Mozambican justice system when the Maputo City Court charged him with six crimes committed in 2016, including two attempted kidnappings, use of prohibited weapons, criminal association, aggravated robbery, and one completed kidnapping.

Mozambican authorities suspected that Satar was one of the masterminds behind a wave of kidnappings that struck Maputo between 2011 and 2014, mainly targeting businesspeople and their relatives.

Source: Lusa