Tony da Costa Fernandes served as the Foreign Minister of UNITA

UNITA

The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola is the second-largest political party in Angola. Founded in 1966, UNITA fought with the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola in the Angolan War for Independence and then against the MPLA in the ensuing civil war .The war was one...

, a rebel group in Angola

Angola

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...

. In the 1990s Fernandes and UNITA Interior Minister General Miguel N'Zau Puna allegedly uncovered the fact that UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi

Jonas Savimbi

Jonas Malheiro Savimbi was an Angolan political leader. He founded and led UNITA, a movement that first waged a guerrilla war against Portuguese colonial rule, 1966–1974, then confronted the rival MPLA during the decolonization conflict, 1974/75, and after independence in 1975 fought the ruling...

 ordered the assassinations of both Wilson dos Santos

Wilson dos Santos

Fernando Wilson dos Santos served as the representative of UNITA, a rebel group in Angola, to Portugal. His brother-in-law, Tito Chingunji, served as Foreign Secretary of UNITA, the principal rebel group that fought against the dos Santos government in Angola's civil war.In the 1990s, UNITA...

, Angola's representative to Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

, and Tito Chingunji

Tito Chingunji

Tito Chingunji served as the foreign secretary of Angola's UNITA rebel movement in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the mid-1980s, he was UNITA's representative in Washington, D.C....

, one of Costa Fernandes' predecessors. Dos Santos and Chingunji's deaths and the defections of Fernandes and Puna weakened the U.S.-UNITA relationship and seriously harmed Savimbi's international reputation.