Innocente Camil, the guerrilla naval commander, reportedly confessed to the crime after his effort to escape in a PAIGC patrol boat was thwarted with the help of a Soviet destroyer. Cabral depended heavily on Soviet and Cuban military assistance, but remained politically moderate, and had been receiving increasing economic and political assistance from the Scandinavian countries and a number of international philanthropic organizations.
Motives for Assassination. Most signs presently point to a feud between mulattos from the Cape Verde Islands and mainland Africans, but there are also signs of Portuguese involvement. At this stage, our information is so fragmentary that any judgments are highly tentative. There have been indications for a number of years of friction between the predominantly mulatto leadership and the largely black cadre.
Cabral also faced serious though sporadic opposition from his military commanders, who chafed under his curbs on military activity in Portuguese Guinea and the continuing subordination of military to political aims. But this infighting never seemed to get beyond control until, just before the assassination, a bitter dispute reportedly erupted between black mainlanders supporting Cabral , a Cape Verdian, and mulattos opposed to him.
The Portuguese Connection. According to their elaborate story, Lisbon was to grant independence to a black government in Guinea Bissau on condition that the dissidents kill Cabral and disrupt the PAIGC. Even so, Portuguese complicity cannot be ruled out on the basis of what we now know.
The attempted escape of the assassins by sea in the direction of Portuguese Guinea suggests that the Portuguese may have been involved, but in itself is not conclusive. Both have been critical of the mulatto leadership and the slow pace of the military campaign. The Guinean Connection. Cabral was able to keep his political distance from Toure, who is a doctrinaire radical. Toure, who is known to have urged an increase in military activity against the Portuguese, may now seek to escalate the guerrilla war.
