MIGUEL A. LOPES/LUSA
The Minister of Internal Administration, Luís Neves
“It is the execution of a hate crime. I was national director of the PJ; we could be facing a crime of a terrorist nature.”
O Minister of Internal Administration admitted today that using an explosive device against participants in the March for Life, on Saturday, in Lisbon, could be considered “a crime of a terrorist nature”.
“It is the execution of a hate crime. In my opinion, and I will give it because I was director of a counterterrorism unit for almost 12 years and I was national director of a police force that investigates these crimes, we may be facing a crime of a terrorist nature”, he told journalists Luis Neves, at the end of the ceremony that marked 50 years of the PSP Intervention Corps.
The minister maintained that the Government “does not accept actions of this type” and “transversely repudiates all this type of act” in which a man threw an incendiary object, like a ‘Molotov cocktail’, which ended up not exploding, at the participants of the March for Life, which brought together around 500 people last Saturday in Lisbon.
The suspect of throwing the object was detained at the scene. He is 39 years old. According to the PSP, some people, also suspected of planning the attack, fled the scene at that time; they would be “integrated into a group allegedly with an anarchist connotation”. Later, three people were identified.
Rui Valério, Patriarch of Lisbon, also reacted, still on Saturday: “These events are seriously unacceptable. Violence is never a path. It does not build, it does not dignify, it does not serve the truth. And it becomes even more painful when it threatens the most fragile”.
On Monday, Paulo Núncio asked: “Why didn’t this attack receive the attention it deserves in the political and media circles? Why didn’t anyone die? Because the criminal didn’t achieve his objectives? Or is it because this extremism came from the extreme left?”
“If it were a trans march, it would open the news”said the parliamentary leader of the CDS-PP, criticizing the alleged lack of “political and media” prominence.
This Wednesday, PSD, Chega and CDS-PP classified it as a “terrorist act” the attack. In a plenary session at the Assembly of the Republic, all parties condemned the incident.
