Six charged with killing journalist

Six people have been charged with the killing of one of Mozambique’s best known journalists, reports quoted police as saying on Tuesday. Carlos Cardoso, the founder and editor of the independent paper ‘Metical’ was shot in the Mozambican capital Maputo on 20 November last year. Reports said businessman Ayob Abdul Satar and former bank manager Vicente Ramaya were charged with contracting the killing, and Abdul Satar’s brother Momade, Anibal Antonio dos Santos, Carlitos Rachid and Manuel Fernandes were accused of carrying it out. Before his death Cardosa wrote extensively about the country’s largest ever bank fraud, in which the equivalent of US $14 million was siphoned out of the Commercial Bank of Mozambique in 1996, on the eve of its privatisation. He accused Ramaya and the powerful Abdul Satar family of orchestrating the crime.