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The Public Ministry requested the conviction of those accused of the crime of qualified damage.
Two 27-year-old men accused of the crime of qualified damage hear the sentence this Monday, at 2.30 pm, in the Foz-Côa Court.
The case dates back to April 25, 2017 in Ribeira de Piscos, where one of the most important cave carvings in the Côa Valley is located and where the defendants, using a stone, scrawled the rock during a mountain bike tour.
During the trial, the defendants, one resident in Torre de Moncorvo and the other in Macedo de Cavaleiros, confessed the authorship of the inscriptions, but denied the purpose of spoiling or disfiguring anything.
In the final allegations, the Public Ministry (MP) requested the conviction of those accused of the crime they are accused of being public, that is, it does not depend on a complaint and is punishable by between 2 to 5 years in prison.
The prosecution achieves the presentation
The trial began on September 30 of last year after a filing order was issued to which the president of the Côa Parque Foundation Bruno Navarro objected, because he understood that it was “a vandalism in classified world heritage in 1998 by Unesco. “and that” an eventual conviction will have a deterrent effect for future acts. “In fact, shortly after the discovery of the act of vandalism, the Foundation’s management stated that it had been” an unspeakable attack. “Arguments that led the MP to reopen the process and, finally, to deduct charges based on the idea that “the conduct of the accused, when making the drawings (…) caused an immeasurable loss of value.”
Left track of Arguidos
The prosecution specified that on April 25, 2017, a group of amateur cyclists made a mountain bike tour starting in Vila Nova de Foz-côa and passing through the cave art center of Ribeira dos Piscos / Quinta dos Poios. In fact, it was two residents of the municipality who took the defendants and other elements to the place where they would make the inscription that contained the representation of a prehistoric man, a bicycle and the word “Bik”. The noun Bike, bicycle in English, was supposed to be spelled out in its entirety, but was never completed due to the warning from one of the tour participants who testified at trial. However, the drawing turned out to be a decisive clue for the Guarda Judicial Police to learn of the aforementioned tour and to identify the perpetrators of the crime.
MP sought compensation from thousands
The Public Ministry (MP) asked that the accused be sentenced to pay compensation of 125 thousand euros, considering that the incisions made by the accused marked the rock in a “visible, permanent, serious and irreversible way.” Most of it, 123 thousand euros, will go to pay a multidisciplinary team to restore the shattered rock and minimize the damage caused by the defendants, and the remaining two thousand euros to compensate for the lack of income from visits from the shattered core. It was closed to the public for more than a year, between April 27, 2017 and February 1, 2018.
DETAILS
A dozen witnesses
The Public Ministry heard from ten witnesses including guides from the archaeological park, a restoration specialist, participants of the mountain bike tour, as well as the current and former presidents of the Côa Parque Foundation.
Valuable heritage
In the final stretch of the Côa river, there are more than 80 rock art sites and around 1200 engraved rocks, in a territory of 200 square kilometers that encompasses the municipalities of Foz-Côa, Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, Pinhel and Meda in the district of Guarda. .
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