2.2 The Story of Alcochete: The Vanity Project

In our last series we followed the rise and fall of the former club president of Sporting Clube de Portugal Bruno de Carvalho. We charted his journey from his childhood in Mozambique to becoming president and each of his seasons in charge of the Sporting SAD. Through the stewardship on the pitch of first Leonardo Jardim, then Marco Silva and finally Jorge Jesus, which ended with the attacks on players and staff at the invasion of Alcochete. We looked at the trials that arose from the attacks and how they were reported in the Portuguese media and the verdict of Judge Pires in the case. Finally we learned how de Carvalho had been removed from his post by club members in a vote and stripped of his membership for good measure. After all that it felt like the story had been told in all its glory, but had it really been told correctly in the case of the trials? Was there a story within the story that hadn't been told, because something didn't add up? After considering all the testimony heard and all evidence provided by the prosecution led by Cândida Vilar, why had she chosen to go after Bruno Jacinto the clubs former liaison officer, Nuno Mendes the leader of the Juve Leo and Bruno de Carvalho as the three men who she claimed had moral authorship of the attacks? The case as far as I was concerned simply didn't stack up.

In our first post we made the hypothetical argument that the real story still to be told potentially had involved Nuno Mendes, but in a far different manner to how it had been painted by the GNR Officers and by Vilar. In fact the spotlight really should have fallen on Fernando Mendes the under leader of the Juve Leo. It transpired that actually at one point not too long after the attacks in May of 2018, that's exactly what did happen. In a massive curveball we discovered that seventeen months before the trial got underway that in the June of 2018, the month after the attacks, Vilar had indeed highlighted this to be the case and had ordered the arrest of not only him but Nuno Torres, Elton Camará (Aleluia) and Joaquim Costa. So the question now is can we find out why between June 2018 and November 2019, Vilar as the prosecutor chose to specifically target Jacinto, Nuno Mendes and Bruno de Carvalho instead? And so, on with the post as we pick our new story within the story back up…

Five hundred and fifty two days had passed since the attacks when the trials finally got underway. Now admittedly there would have been a mountain of due diligence to undertake for the prosecution team, here the word bureaucracy will have taken on a whole new level of meaning. All the evidence submitted has to be done legally correct with a corresponding chain of evidence. If an error is spotted during trial then the case can potentially be dismissed on a technicality you cannot just say I'm very sorry your honour let me just tippex that part out. Yet whilst that remains true, you can surely still argue that 552 days would be sufficient to build your case especially given Vilar’s want to try under the stiffer charge of Alcochete having been a terrorist attack as defined under Portuguese law. Call this a form of domestic terrorism if you will, we're clearly not talking about foreign actors at work as in the case of 911. If you're pressing ahead with this then surely you've got all your ducks in a row right? Right? I mean you wouldn't be daft enough not to, that's just utter madness. If that were true then surely the judge should have taken the requisite legal measures? Well apparently not. If this was a podcast someone would be playing in the Benny Hill theme tune right about now. 

In an article written by Rui Gustavo and Hugo Franco published on November 16th, 2019 they lead with the byline;

Bruno de Carvalho goes to trial without the MP having direct proof of his involvement in the attack.

I'm sorry, what now? For a moment I thought that read that Cândida Vilar, the prosecutor, was taking the Sporting Clube de Portugal former club president to court for moral authorship of the attacks without any evidence. Oh no wait, that is exactly what it said. Yes I've admitted in the last series that Google translate cannot cope with Portuguese. Men in articles become she and women in articles become he. According to Google translate at one point a glacier was thrown at the players and at another point it decided that no it was an iceberg. No mention of polar bears however. But here allowing for a margin of error and doubt as you must with everything, because nothing is ever 100% certain, I'm 99.9% sure that statement is correct. Not for the first time we'll all be experiencing that collective feeling of what-the-fuckery?

I mentioned in the last series that the trial should have been tried in the local court but owing to the sheer scale of it the case was moved to the Monsanto Court which had been purpose built in Lisbon to try the members of the terrorist group FP-25 de Abril. Judge Sílvia Rosa Pires had reserved the large room of the court which is where Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho was sentenced to 15 years in prison for founding the terrorist association. (One assumes no relation). The case would be set to last for at least 24 sessions until January the 31st, 2020. There were already whispers of defendants willing to break the code of silence to earn themselves a better deal. The Sicilian moral code of omerta clearly flying out the window or just maybe never applied in Portugal.

Now in the buildup to this type of case you hold a pre-trial. It's purpose is basically to check on the progress, specifically ensuring all evidence and documents are disclosed and conform and in turn confirm importantly that both the defence and prosecution are ready to try the case. Now add that description to the part about there being no evidence against Bruno de Carvalho. I mean it's not like he's being accused of nicking a Mars bar from your local Tesco's here is it? You're trying the man on charges of terrorism. Vilar has her finger pointed at him saying you were the moral author of the attacks, you were the one who instigated everything, I define this to be a terror attack but in fairness Judge Pires I don't have any credible evidence to support it. To whoever just said fuck me at the back - yes, fuck me indeed. 

Now unsurprisingly Bruno de Carvalho's lawyers had been trying to get the case dropped against him without the need for it to go to trial. The investigation phase allows for the defendants lawyers to try and discredit the evidence presented by the prosecution which no surprise to learn, they did indeed do. Equally they argued that trying the case under the guise of terrorism was “an exaggeration,’ relating to the situation in question. Based on our first series you imagine that Cândida Vilar must be some smooth talker to have gotten it this far, but this time around with the benefit of additional knowledge you're really thinking this surely cannot go ahead?

Bruno de Carvalho and his team appealed several times to the Lisbon Court of Appeal against the charge of terrorism but judge Carlos Delca agreed with Vilar and so it's not just de Carvalho looking at charges of terrorism but all 44 defendants. Shit really did just get real.

The defence team for de Carvalho requested that the court authorised a reconstruction of the attack precisely "to know who did what". Valter Semedo was the only one identified and is suspected of having punched Rodrigo Battaglia and William Carvalho. The fingerprints of two defendants were detected on the carboy [a large vessel used for holding liquids] used to assault Battaglia.

Now de Carvalho was let out on a €70,000 bail but most of the 44 defendants had been in pre-trial detention, but in the final weeks before the trial began only two remained on remand - Mustafá on charges of drug trafficking and Aleluia for basically cutting his ankle tag off and violating the rules of being under house arrest. So you'll be forgiven for wondering why after his arrest in June, Fernando Mendes didn't also remain on remand. The answer was one on health grounds as it was discovered he was suffering from leukaemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. 

Don't worry I'm not about to retell the trial again if you followed the first series in its entirety, I'm merely just adding some context for any new readers and trying to figure what ace Cândida Vilar thinks she has up her sleeve to link de Carvalho to the attacks. Time for another curveball anyone to keep you on your toes?

During the trial Bruno de Carvalho will have to explain the exchange of six SMS messages between himself and Fernando Mendes during the troubled period. Remember how seventeen months ago that with the arrests of the Juve Leo four, that Vilar at that point wanted to charge Fernando Mendes with being the mastermind of the attacks? Well it cannot have been a good look for the club president to have been seeing to communicate with him on any level. Rewinding back to the previous post and the past series we know at least one of the reasons why Fernando Mendes had contacted him by phone and that's because he was super pissed at Marcus Acuña after what he was alleged to have said at the airport to him and wanted his home address. Here we naturally assume that it wasn't to compare notes on the previous seven days' weather and to ask how the Argentines family was. In our last post we also noted that de Carvalho clearly in possession of all this information took no additional security precautions, that despite Acuña, Battaglia and Jorge Jesus, the Sporting coach being told by Mendes that he would see them in Alcochete. Okay it feels like a giant leap on the prosecution's part to claim de Carvalho had ordered the attacks but if you were going after Fernando Mendes as one of the three morals authors of the attack then maybe you could find a link between the two men to pin part of the blame onto de Carvalho, but when it's all said and done, it's still a stretch and whilst it would be the weakest part of his defence, the prosecutor still has the problem that it does not have an SMS, a wiretap or verifiable testimony of Bruno de Carvalho's involvement. All it really has is his outbursts on social media which included: "SPOILED BOYS, SO LET'S SOLVE IT.” Good job it wasn't an email because he could have put it in bold caps. Then you'd know he was super pissed. But enough to order an attack on his own players? Hardly. However for Vilar this statement "aimed to determine the fans to commit violent acts,” because he already had an open conflict with Rui Patrício, William Carvalho and Marcos Acuña, whom he held responsible for the team's poor results and claimed that they wanted to go to other clubs. Then we go back to the meeting at Casinha where Mustafá and Bocas (Tiago Silva) had been present along with de Carvalho and we reintroduce our old friend, the words “do what you want.” For Vilar this is a "determination" for the attacks.  For her this was the instruction phrase which assumed moral authorship in the club presidents part.

De Carvalho’s lawyer Miguel A. Fonseca confirmed the actual meaning and context of the words  "Do what you want, it was about the banners and whether they could take banners of encouragement or demands to the stadium." That's a far cry from moral authorship of the attacks. Fonseca used messages exchanged by members of the Juve Leo which contained insults against his client to argue that actually he would be "the next to take it in the back" and that the accusation, without direct evidence linking him to the attack, "is a humiliation."

Not as much of a humilitation as if I'd changed back to read bum.

This feels like you're a child in the middle of your parents arguing and proportioning blame to one another and you don't know which way to look.

Note that on the day the defendants Hugo Ribeiro, Celso Cordeiro, Sérgio Santos and Elton Camará were questioned, the prison services transported the detainees to Montijo and not to Lisbon meaning that the investigation phase began six hours later than scheduled.

Judge Carlos Delca rejected a new request for the case to be dismissed, the fourth since the beginning of the process. The requests alleged among other things, that the defendants had not committed any of the acts they stand accused of, didn't carry any weapons, did not enter the locker room and did not witness any aggression.

Sérgio Santos

He confirmed he had been at the academy but defended himself by justifying that he was "the penultimate to enter" and that, when he did, "the others had already messed up". He also explained that he had "parachuted" into the Academy and denied having been hidden under a tree, explaining that he was even talking to Jorge Jesus and William Carvalho.

Note - please let that mean he jumped out of an aeroplane. Thank you Google translate once again. 

Elton Camará

The man better known as Aleluia confirmed he was a childhood friend of William. Perhaps suggestions made by the former club president Bruno de Carvalho that the midfielder used the claques to solve some of his off field issues might actually have some substance to them. Remember William in his testimony confirmed he knew four of the defendants at Alcochete on the day of the attacks. Aleluia admits to belonging to a WhatsApp group called "Chiefs of the Nucleus,” and being responsible for the Marvila nucleus.

Note - no idea. Sorry. 

He confesses that other defendants were also part of that same group, though denies that there were any messages with plans to invade Alcochete.

Bruno de Carvalho's lawyer Miguel Fonseca confirms he will take part in the disciplinary proceedings against Judge Delca for allowing Cândida Vilar, to ask questions whilst preventing the lawyers from having the same right. 

Let's change tack for a while and focus on the prosecutor Cândida Vilar because we've never really touched on her background before in either series and maybe in doing so we can open the curtains and let in some light into the room so we can see things a little clearer. We already touched on the point that the case because of its size had to be moved to Lisbon. Had it stayed in the court of Almada it would have been tried by a different prosecution. It was the decision of Maria José Morgado, then the district PGR of Lisbon, that this case be handed over to Cândida Vilar. So what was her background prior to this case? Well Vilar had experience of trying cases involving Neo-Nazis and the Lisbon Night Mafia (sounds intriguing but I'm not going down another rabbit hole). Her aim was always to go for those she had suspected as being at the top of the hierarchy. What was that sound? I think it might have been the penny dropping. So having garnered a reputation for going after the bosses, she's highly unlikely to go for the low hanging fruit. Which I suspect is why Bruno de Carvalho and Nuno Mendes end up sitting at the top of the pile with Bruno Jacinto as a facilitator, the middle man if you will. I don't think it's wrong to suggest that Vilar is going to try use the high profile nature of this case to further her own career and reputation. This will turn into her own personal vanity project. 

What should be an ordinary case of "aggression" is being blown up into accusations of terrorism by Vilar. Before the trial even commenced she’d been fined the equivalent of 15 days' salary which was imposed by the Superior Council of the Public Prosecutor's Office (CSMP). This was for having declared in the indictment that the investigation was not completed because the pessoa jurídica had not completed the expert examination on the mobile phone of André Geraldes, former team manager of Sporting. According to the Prosecutor’s office the magistrate should have ordered the extraction of a certificate to investigate Geraldes in a separate case but instead listed him as a witness. Following this accusations had been levelled against her for the manner in which she questioned Fernando Mendes with suggestions she had been intentionally rude. The audio was released and she was undergoing another disciplinary process for this matter in conjunction with the fine. Not a great start to her case.

Vilar will make the claim against Fernando Mendes that his actions at Funchal Airport will be the spark that lit the gas and ultimately what led to the attacks occurring. According to Vilar, the only reason he didn't assault Acuña there and then was because he was prevented in doing so by a combination of other players, staff and the civil police. It is alleged that Acuña called the fans who abused him directly after the defeat to Marítimo “son's of bitches.” Added new context - Maybe one of the reasons why Fernando Mendes was so incensed is because he'd just lost his mother. I wrote it in the last series and I will repeat it here that this is clearly a cultural thing. Maybe it's a specific catholic thing? The sanctity of the mother. I don't get it, it just sounds like a nonsensical excuse for boys to participate in some willy waving. Grow the fuck up. It's not like Acuña called his mother the c word and said I'm glad she's dead now is it and it sounds like he's offered it as a general term to all present and here at least not even said specifically to Fernando. Still I believe there are several stages to the grief process of which anger is one. At Alcochete he was taken out by Nuno Torres in the blue BMW thus avoiding arrest. Okay so that maybe answers the question better of why Bruno Jacinto ends up accused of moral authorship because if memory serves me correctly he asks the security man Ricardo Vaz I think to allow Torres access. I need one of those cork boards with photos of everyone pinned up and bits of coloured string linking everything one by one. What I've actually got is a mobile phone in my hand with no internet connection, a word document I'm typing into, my memory and I'm walking down the dirt path next to a wheat field. Who says men cannot multitask? 

Truthfully what we need now though is something else. Another detail to knit everything together. 

Now I might be very wrong about Vilar. I've never met the woman so I'm casting aspersions on her good nature which lets be honest feels quite a dangerous thing to do but I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me she was the type of woman who reads the Portuguese press. Afterall she is about to become the lead prosecutor in Portugal's highest profile trial. I think it stands to reason that she might have picked up the papers in a spare five minutes when trying to construct the case and had she read this then she might have spat her coffee out everywhere. 

Fernando Mendes in an interview with 'Diário de Notícias' published on December 2nd, 2018 had just set off a mini explosion. 

Fernando Mendes, former leader of Juve Leo, revealed that Bruno de Carvalho told him to go to the Alcochete Academy "to put pressure on them [the players], to give them a dressing down". "I've been wondering if he didn't change the training date based on that conversation (...) he changed it to Tuesday because he knew I was going there and calculated that there would be more people following me.”

Mendes, who is currently in pre-trial detention, revealed that Bruno de Carvalho called him on Saturday, May 12th, between 9 PM and 10 PM, and that he himself called the president on Sunday to "inform him that he had gone to the airport to speak with Jorge Jesus, and the call lasted one minute." "My phone company's records show that between May 4th and 30th there is only one call from me to Bruno de Carvalho. That's the one. Then, he called me about five or six times in the early hours of Sunday to Monday. I answered one of the calls and we were on the phone for over an hour," he recounted. 

A trip to Alcochete is a topic in that same call: "I told him that it wasn't acceptable for a player [Acuña], after eight months at Sporting, not to have the club's mystique, and that I was going to Alcochete on Tuesday to continue the conversation with Jorge Jesus. He [Bruno de Carvalho] said I was right, that I should go there and put pressure on them, give them a good talking to. And I replied that he didn't need to give them any talking to, that I just wanted to clarify things with the coach. Today I know that he already knew there was no training on Tuesday. But he didn't tell me," he recalled, adding that he always entered the Academy whenever he wanted. "I was always given permission to enter. And believe me, that was many times…”

Clearly Fernando Mendes is not insinuating here that de Carvalho has ordered the attacks. We know from the testimony of the players that the attacks stopped when some were heard to say words along the lines of - it wasn't supposed to happen like this, we need to leave, which they promptly tried to do before being arrested. What he clearly is claiming though is that de Carvalho himself knew about their visit in advance and took no action. He didn't inform Vascos Santos or Ricardo Gonçalves, the two men responsible for overall security relating to Sporting SAD and by extension the first team players, or the head of security for Alcochete. Which if that is true, it is pretty damning indeed. He doesn't discourage it, doesn't ask for Fernando not to go, I'm fact actively encouraged it if what Mendes stated was true. Remember in a post in the first series where I wrote along the lines that they must have known about the training times being switched otherwise they'd have turned up to find no one there? Whilst it might have been stating the obvious, until now we've found no one from the defendants side involved in the attacks who admitted they had prior knowledge. I would like to tell you all how he knew. Unfortunately I can't. We know that Gelson was warned in advance about the attacks. We know that William has the personal numbers or some of the claques. Did Jacinto actually tell Bocas when they met as Casinha at 2 or 3 in the afternoon? Or did Bocas tell Jacinto who then independently verifies it which is why he goes to the training centre supposedly to act as a liaison between the players and the fans because clearly he would have had to have been aware that training had been changed in exactly the same manner as those or the Juve Leo would have known? So parts of it certainly adds up. But without any firm evidence we'll never actually know. At the end of the day it's all hearsay but as hearsay goes it doesn't reflect at all well on Bruno de Carvalho let's be honest. If it is true, and only the two men will ever know, there's no reasonable way of knowing on his part how it would have escalated. I think we can be pretty safe to suggest that because of the testimony of the players again - this wasn't supposed to happen like this. So whilst in the WhatsApp group some may have given it the big one it's safe to suggest a lot who went and didn't participate in anything more than verbal abuse assumed it was just bravado. 

Now in Nuno Mendes testimony to the courts a couple of months later Mustafá stated that Bruno de Carvalho did not give "carte blanche" for the attack on Alcochete. With that in mind and knowing that de Carvalho would have no doubt been alerted to Fernando Mendes claims I think we can safely assume why de Carvalho confirms in his testimony that he doesn't like the latter but does like the former. 

The problem as always is we're left with more questions than answers but we are slowly piecing more pieces of the story together coming at it from new angles which should be making you question everything you thought you knew in one breath and then in the next wondering if actually some of the claims are true, then maybe Vilar does have a case to prosecute? Because the law is a funny thing. Certainly in the UK you can get tried for the same punishment as someone who committed an actual offence even if you didn't take part. No, genuinely that is a thing I shit you not. 

Joint enterprise also known as second liability.

You can be convicted if you intentionally encouraged or assisted the crime or if you were part of a shared plan and foresaw that another participant might commit the offence. 

I believe under Portuguese law you'd try the case under Articles 26 and 27. 

Co-Authorship (Article 26): This applies when you directly participate in executing the crime by agreement with the main offender. For a conviction, the execution of the crime (or the attempt) must have actually begun.

Complicity (Article 27): This is the closer equivalent. It covers intentionally assisting or encouraging the crime, even if you don't physically carry out the main act . 

This entire affair is like the wound that would heel if only I'd stop picking at it. 

So it definitely on one hand feels like a vanity project for Vilar. I'd argue that she'd have been better served trying Fernando Mendes for moral authorship of the attacks and if she wanted to go after Bruno de Carvalho try to do it under either article 26 or 27 of both. She'd have stood a better chance of tying that to aggression than she ever does of trying to prove it sat under a terrorist attack. The problem as always though is the lack of fixed evidence between certain parties. They all make counter claims against one another throughout their testimony. Therefore the only ones who actually knew the truth aren't saying it. Although technically that being said presumably one side was telling the truth, the question therefore becomes which one? Who do you believe more? Of course that's a general question for you to mull over in the here and now. Court cases thankfully aren't tried in that manner. 

Join us again in our next post when we'll take you down another rabbit hole. 

Note - There's a claim that despite leaving the Juve Leo, Fernando Mendes received a fixed monthly allowance. I've no idea what that related to but if anyone can shine a light on the matter I'd be grateful.