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Rómulo Rodrigues da Costa, who earned the nickname “Binas” on the streets of Massamá because of the way he had to get bicycles, was an enigma for Nero Saraiva, the most dangerous Portuguese terrorist. In July 2013, Nero, who was called “the emperor”, had been fighting for more than a year in Syria, among IS troops. “So is Binas coming or not?” Saraiva asked, on a mobile phone, Rómulo’s younger brother, Celso Costa. Less than a month later, Celso would leave Lisbon for the battlefield, using Binas’s passport to evade the authorities and enter Turkey. “Not yet, man, not yet,” Celso replied to Saraiva, who was surprised. “This one too … is something, it is possessed by Xabá.”
The portrait of Rómulo Costa, from the perspective of the Judicial Police (PJ), which closely watched his every step, fits in with that of a man committed to Islamic extremism. Cautious, he stayed in London, while the younger brothers, Celso and Edgar, fought in Syria. But even from a distance he saw himself as part of a mission, a “test to infinity”, as described in one of the homemade jihadist propaganda materials found in the raids of the house where he lived with his parents, the year past.
Rómulo’s lawyer, Lopes Guerreiro, assures i that the propaganda materials PJ is talking about are mere rap songs and that there is no evidence against his client. “What exists are conclusions, inferences, speculations. There is evidence on other elements, but they do not concern Romulus, they refer to the brothers ”. They are only “fraternal conversations”, “unfortunate comments” from years ago, out of context, he defends. However, it is difficult to imagine in what context someone would ask his brother to focus on the “murder” when he was fighting in Syria for Daesh, or to laugh at the murder of a British policeman.
Today, Rómulo Costa is alone. At the age of 41, he is in preventive detention in the Monsanto prison, as the main defendant in the trial of the Massama cell, which should begin this Tuesday, since the seven remaining defendants disappeared in the deserts of Syria and Iraq, were reported as dead or missing. Except for Nero Saraiva, who witnessed the birth and death of the caliphate, wounded and captured by Kurdish forces in the last stronghold of the jihadists, in Baghouz, and Cassimo Turé, who is tailor-made for terms of identity and residence ( we’ll talk about it later).
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