Montenegro broke promise about Acts of Israel Armament Sales?

A year ago Luís Montenegro promised that weapons to Israel would not pass through Portugal. This does not seem to have been fulfilled. The Prime Minister devalues ​​and says that what happened was “a scale, I believe that of three planes, the information I have, not exactly military weaponry.”

On October 3, 2024, in full parliamentary debate in the Assembly of the Republic, Luís Montenegro promised that weapons to Israel would never pass through Portugal.

The Prime Minister responded to Left Bloc leader Mariana Mortágua, who encouraged the government to “seal the Portuguese airspace to the passage of weapons that serve Israel’s war crimes.”

Montenegro gave this guarantee: “On the issue of the use of Portuguese airspace to fly over flights with military material, we have made a decision that has no parallel, which reminds me of our democratic history and our principle will be followed if new requests are made about the same context and the same framing”.

This episode was evoked by this Friday. The same week it was known that, with the three F-35 sold by the US to the Israeli Air Force.

In the end, Montenegro really seems to have violated his own commitment.

The case was news this week in Portugal, after El País reported that there would have been a passage of Israelite planes at the Lajes base, in the third, after the Spanish government did not authorize overflow or the passage through its ports. Paulo Rangel knew nothing.

However, the Foreign Minister has already said that he would investigate responsibilities in the ministry. According to Expresso, everything points to the Ambassador Helena Malcata who will have induced Paulo Rangel in error.

Montenegro devalued The case, considering that the passage of F-35 aircraft sold by the US, Israel was a “procedural errorwhich is now identified. ”There is nothing more to say about it, because everything else was a Perfectly normal processing“He considered.

“What happened was at MNE, a procedure that did not come to the minister’s knowledge at the time when it was necessary to have occurred and this is assumed; and the Minister is, moreover, to reflect on the change of procedures Internal for these situations do not occur, ”he said.

Montenegro denies intervention in act of sale

Already on Saturday, the prime minister stated that “the government did not intervene in any act” that could be understood as sales of military weaponry to Israel, on the scale of the US aircraft in the slabs.

The prime minister began to say that the theme was already “clarified” by himself and the minister, but took the question to “clarify” one aspect. “

“We do not intervene in any act that could be understood as a sale of weaponry to Israel. This did not happen. A scale happenedI believe that of three planes, the information I have, not exactly military weaponry, ”he said.