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The Portuguese accused of having ties to Daesh on Tuesday denied any adherence to the terrorist cause, but faced a wiretap in which he used the expressions “slaughter zone” and “kill those pigs.”
Rómulo Costa, in preventive prison in Portugal since 2019 for crimes related to belonging to, supporting and financing the extremist group, was confronted by the presiding judge, Francisco Coimbra, with a hearing held in September 2013 in which the accused, speaking with his brother Edgar Costa (who went to fight and supposedly died in the Daesh fight), he says: “You went to the slaughter area and now you are thinking about babies (…). You have to think about killing those pigs “.
The reference to babies was related to the fact that Edgar Costa, a more orthodox Islamist, asked his brother Rómulo Costa if one or two more women would not find him through his wife, since Islam allows polygamy.
In court, Rómulo Costa assured that “death zone” has nothing to do with the fact that his brother Edgar went to Tanzania (the African country where Daesh is located), but that this was just an expression used in Massamá . Queluz, where the youth spent and that meant “a problem to be solved.”
Regarding the allusion to the end of “the pigs”, the accused reiterated that this expression alluded to those who did not respect human rights, having, later, in the same trial session, the prosecution witness Nuno Rogeiro, heard as a specialist in Terrorism matter in the Islamic world, he mentioned that “pigs” means “unclean” for Daesh fighters, compared to pig that is not admitted by the Muslim religion.
Lopes Guerreiro, Rómulo Costa’s defense lawyer, who has been insisting that the accusation is “fragile”, recalled that in 2014 the British secret services seized a mobile phone and a “pen” in the United Kingdom from its constituent and that, after being An expert examined, did not find anything that would compromise him with Daesh, and the Portuguese investigation has no reason to doubt now the innocence of the accused, who only very sporadically spoke with his brothers Edgar and Celso, who embraced the so-called “holy war.”
The judge also confronted Rómulo Costa with a search carried out by the PJ of the house in Portugal where Rómulo Costa’s father and the rest of the family lived, and during which several more people were seized in one of the fourth documents. The accused said he was unaware of these facts, after declaring in the previous session that he never recruited anyone to fight for Daesh in Syria.
In his defense, he also said that brothers Edgar and Celso (allegedly killed in fighting in Syria) criticized him for not following the most orthodox principles of Islam, when he went to discos and places where there was music and mixed groups of women and men. Furthermore, he did not pray five times a day, as is the practice of the most radical Islamists.
Romulo Costa reiterated that Islam does not teach armed violence and that it follows this precept like the vast majority of the approximately three billion Muslims in the world, who in no way identify with the purposes of Daesh.
The court listened for more than an hour to Nuno Rogeiro, a researcher and university professor, who through examples and history helped those present to understand the expressions and the “modus operandi” of the Islamic radicals of different terrorist groups.
Nuno Rogeiro considered it plausible that a person with academic studies, a working life in the United Kingdom or another European country, without external signs of being a radical Islamist (grown beard) and perfectly integrated into society, could, after all, be a Daesh recruiter. pointing out that there is a terrorist manual seized in Iraq that provides for this “concealment” or “camouflage”.
Although he stressed that it was not referring to anyone in particular, the case fit the profile of the defendant, who studied and worked for several years in London and never adopted a physiognomy typical of the radicals, sporting long beards without a mustache.
However, last week, the Lisbon Criminal Court decided to separate the cases of Rómulo Costa and Massimo Turé from the prosecution of the other defendants, since they are missing and were allegedly murdered, although the presiding judge, Francisco Coimbra, points out that there is still no death certificate on file.
At the end of the session on Tuesday, Rómulo Costa’s lawyer devalued the implications that Nuno Rogeiro’s testimony could have had for his constituent, even considering that he was not a totally impartial witness considering his known intimacy with European secret services.
What is at stake in this process are the crimes of recruiting, affiliating and supporting the terrorist organization IS and terrorist financing.
The case resulted from an investigation of judicial cooperation between the Portuguese and British authorities, and the defendant Rómulo Costa denies the charges of terrorism, admitting only that he spoke with the brothers / guerrillas by phone to find out if they were well and learn information about other family members. live in refugee camps.
The prosecution understands that all the defendants joined forces, recruited and financed Daesh in their own way, supporting the movement of Portuguese and British citizens to Syria to fight alongside the jihadists.
