The PJ believes that the knife, which was in Odair Moniz’s closed bag, was planted on the ground. The police report may also have been falsified, as the officer who shot could not have done so at the time it was written.
According to , the Judicial Police suspects that the PSP falsified the report of the death of Odair Moniz — the man who was fatally shot by the police in Cova da Moura and whose death led to a wave of protests and contempt in Lisbon — and that was not written by the agent that went off.
One of the factors that seems to invalidate the possibility that it was the officer who killed Odair Moniz who created the document is the time at which it was written, since the officer in question I was being interrogated at the time by PJ and was not in the PSP division in Amadora. The report had also not yet been signed by the agent who supposedly wrote it when it was handed over to the PJ.
Another detail that the PJ is investigating is the possibility that the knife with which Odair Moniz allegedly threatened the agents have been planted. Odair Moniz carried a knife in a zippered bag tied around his waist, but there are no images that show him wielding the bladed weapon, as described in the PSP statement.
The knife ended up being found on the floor and, according to a judicial source, the PJ suspects that it was planted to justify the shots fired by the PSP agent.
When questioned by the PC on the night of the incident, the agent who fired the shots would have recognized that Odair Moniz, in fact, didn’t wield the knife nor trying to attack the two police officers with a sharp weapon.
CNN says that the investigation is taking place in the regional section of DIAP in Lisbon, and not in DIAP in Amadora, due to suspected car manipulation. If these suspicions are confirmed, they could implicate other PSP members in Amadora.
The agent, who is accused of the crime of simple homicide, was questioned by prosecutor Patrícia Agostinho this Wednesday, but remained silent. When he was initially heard by the PJ shortly after Odair Moniz’s death, he did not have a lawyer and there was no magistrate in the room, which means that his statements cannot be used as evidence on trial.
