Two years after the fire in the Serra da Agrela, in Santo Tirso, which killed dozens of animals, no charges were filed in the criminal proceedings and the Public Ministry did not notify a key witness, the lawyer told Lusa.
“Yes, it is true, it is a fact that two years have passed since the fires in the Serra da Agrela, in Santo Tirso, which affected those two shelters, but it is also a fact that there is at least one witness that we consider essential, since that he is a veterinary doctor who assisted numerous animals at the time of the fire, which has not even been notified”, revealed Pedro Ribeiro de Castro about the process that is currently in the Judicial Court of Santo Tirso.
Preventive detention for alleged perpetrator of fire that killed animals in Santo Tirso
A criminal case is at stake, which brought together several complaints triggered after the fires that, on July 17, 2020, in Serra da Agrela, killed dogs and cats from the illegal shelters “Cantinho das Quatro Patas” and “Abrigo de Paredes”. ”. ”. ”.
Initiated by the People-Animals-Nature (PAN) party, the process targets the mayor of Santo Tirso, Alberto Costa, elements of the local GNR, Civil Protection of Santo Tirso, the former municipal veterinarian Jorge Salústio and the owners of the illegal hostels.
“We made a list of 25 witnesses and, if you do the math, 25 witnesses divided by 24 months gives almost one witness per month,” said the lawyer who revealed to Lusa that he had sent the “request to the Public Ministry (MP) to warn that there are witnesses who have not yet been questioned.”
VIGIL FOR THE ANIMALS OF SANTO TIRSO 2 years and more than 100 victims later, the protection of animals in Portugal continues…
Posted by PAN Santo Tirso on Tuesday, July 12, 2022
To be sure of his conviction about the duration of the process, Pedro Ribeiro de Castro reported that a few days ago he confirmed the “address and mobile number” with the veterinarian, thus ensuring that “until last week he had not been notified.”
“I don’t know how many [testemunhas] they were heard, since the MP does not take note of the inquiries made. Should [o MP] give notice, to the assistant who enumerated them, of the lack of their investigation. I can assume that everyone was heard, which is not true, it is a rebuttable assumption, which boils down to being false, because we know that at least one person was not heard, ”he insisted.
In the request sent to the MP, the lawyer also alluded to the “too long period for this investigation,” he said, explaining that “in a normal process, the investigation normally takes eight months.”
“There is no requirement that I know of and the last time I consulted the process was in December 2021 and it had already exceeded eight months and there was nothing in the process that accounted for the complexity or the promotion of the MP to request the complexity of this process”, he underlined.
Pedro Ribeiro de Castro interprets the two years of “silence” as “justice in action, and there seems to be no interest in processing this processsince it does not make sense for it to take so long in a final post-investigation dispatch.”
On Monday, the PAN will organize a vigil in front of the Santo Tirso Justice Court, scheduled for 9:00 p.m., to denounce that “two years and more than 100 victims later, animal protection in Portugal continues to be undervalued and some still have to be answered. important questions about this tragedy”, reads the statement published on the PAN page in Santo Tirso.
Source: Observadora
