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The testimony was already long when Roberto Carlos Pinto da Costa, cavalry major and officer of the Military Judicial Police (PJM) took a sheet of paper and pointed at an imaginary conference table. “Luís Neves presided here [diretor da PJ]; then doctors João Melo, Vitor Magalhães and Amadeu Guerra [procuradores do DCIAP], this is Colonel Estalagem [PJM] So here I am. “
The major had recovered the war material stolen in Tancos and was summoned to a high-level meeting with those responsible for the investigation of the assault on Tancos. At that meeting he said that the material had been recovered thanks to an anonymous phone call, which he knew was false. “Colonel Estalagem presented this version and corroborative. On the trip to Lisbon said we had to say that.”
The normally calm judge Nelson Barra was exalted: “Did he lie to the magistrates?” Flawless in his gray army uniform, Pinto da Costa took another sip of water and admitted: “They are orders. And a military man has to follow them.”
In fact, it was a PJM operative who made the false call, in collusion with the PJM officers who carried out the clandestine operation that would lead to the recovery of the weapons and their arrest by the civilian PJ – who discovered the illegal operation . “When they arrested me, I spent two nights without sleeping and three without eating, I didn’t know what to do,” said Pinto da Costa, who presented himself as an operative who obeyed orders and investigated the robbery “within the PJM process.” Always within the law. He also rejected the MP’s version of having been informed by a PJ inspector of the possibility of the assault even before it occurred. “I was decorated by the president. Am I a liar?”
