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Alexandre Patrício Gouveia, brother of António Patrício Gouveia (Camarate’s mortal victim, with also Minister Amaro da Costa and Prime Minister Francisco Sá Carneiro), investigated the case for four years and defends the thesis that the authors of the attack were five elements linked to the Reagan administration due to obstacles created by the Portuguese government to the illegal arms trade. The Mandates of the Camarate Attack – The American Involvement, a book by Patrício Gouveia, recounts in detail the strategy of the Republican Party in the clandestine sale of arms to Iran and the way in which the political power and the Justice followed the Camarate case in Portugal . . In this interview, conducted at the home of Alexandre Patrício Gouveia this week, the former Economy deputy in Prime Minister Francisco Pinto Balsemão’s office does not skimp on criticizing the number one militant of the PSD, his cousin, and considers it a “scandal” not to have done so done. there was a trial.
You have no doubt that there was an attack on Camarate?
This problem was solved with the parliamentary commissions of inquiry. The first three commissions of inquiry said more information was needed, but the fourth took over and took over until the tenth commission. The fact that all political parties voted in commissions of inquiry, from 1994 to today, that Camarate was an attack shows that the order to carry out this attack in all probability did not come from Portugal. If I had left Portugal, there would be one of these games that would be in a situation where I could not say that we are facing an attack. The fact that everyone concluded that it was an attack is a sign that the crime did not originate in Portugal. This is my deduction.
But it was only later that the thesis of the attack emerged …
What happened was that, a few days later, the Government began to say that it had been an accident. As for me, in a hasty and wrong way. It is something inexplicable, even today. There is an episode that Inácio Costa reports [chefe da segurança do primeiro-ministro, Francisco Sá Carneiro], who is still alive, in which he says he saw the plane take off and noticed that there, later on, he was engulfed in a fireball. This is a clear sign of an exploding bomb. He was obviously very upset about this and reported it to the engineer. [José] Viana Batista, who was Minister of Transport. Viana Baptista told him that he would be heard by the Judicial Police to make these statements. And then Francisco Pinto Balsemão, who was coming from Porto, also arrived at the airport [num avião particular]and asked Viana Baptista to take him to the party headquarters. [PSD] to tell you what had happened. It was just the two of them in the car.
And did you tell him what you had seen?
It is unthinkable that Viana Baptista did not report this information. More relevant than this is impossible and, therefore, we can say that on December 4, 1980 there were already two members of the Government who knew about this report that pointed to an attack. And yet, for reasons that I cannot explain, Francisco Pinto Balsemão argued that everything pointed to an accident. He published an unofficial note on December 12, saying that everything pointed to an accident. It’s a hasty thing. How can you tell eight days later if it was an accident or an attack? It’s nothing serious. To be serious, it took four or five months to investigate. And there is another aggravating factor. Freitas do Amaral, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs, received a telegram from the Portuguese Ambassador in London [Freitas Cruz] to say: ‘I was contacted by three members of Scotland Yard to inform me that they arrested a man named Lee Rodrigues, on December 5, the day after the attack, and that this man is an explosives specialist and is involved in arms trafficking. And we know they saw him walking through the Portela airport on December 4. ‘
This information was not considered relevant …
Freitas do Amaral asked to deliver the telegram to the director of the Judicial Police and this telegram was ignored. He passed this information on to the Prime Minister and continued to ignore it. He always defended that Camarate was an accident and transmitted this information, not only within the Government, but also to the Judicial Police and the Public Ministry. This did not cease to influence the way the investigations were carried out.
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