After presidential candidate Ana Gomes had announced that Paulo Pedroso would integrate the organizational structure of his campaign, the socialist parliamentary leader came out in defense of the ex-minister, who was constituted accused in the Casa Pia process but was not given a final judgment. “Paulo Pedroso has every right to be what he wants. He is a free man, without any guilt that he weighs or that can be imputed to him ”, he wrote on Facebook.
Stressing that he decided to take a public position on the matter so that his silence would not be understood as “an accomplice silence” of an “injustice”, Ana Catarina Mendes, who was married to Paulo Pedroso, says that the former minister and now ex-socialist militant, although it was targeted by justice, it was “For the same justice absolutely cleared of a monstrous charge”.
I will publicly express a position that is imperative for me because my silence would be complicit with one more…
Posted by Ana Catarina Mendes on Thursday, September 24, 2020
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“I will publicly express a position that is imperative for me because my silence would be complicit with yet another injustice that, in the process, caused so much pain and causes to himself and to those close to him”, he began by writing condemned, “very vehemently , slander, often hidden in the comfortable and dirty anonymity of social networks ”.
Ana Catarina Mendes has not yet taken a position on who is going to support the presidential elections, not least because the PS has not yet debated the issue in its own bodies, so it stresses that the departure in defense of the presumed campaign director of Ana Gomes has nothing to do with the support you will or will not give to that application. “I will have time to take a position on the upcoming presidential elections,” he said.
As Ana Gomes had already done when she announced Paulo Pedroso’s support for his candidacy, Ana Catarina Mendes reinforces that the Portuguese justice that accused the former Minister of Labor was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights “For the way he accused and treated someone who was forever left with a brand he didn’t deserve”.
“Paulo Pedroso has every right to be what he wants. He is a free man, without any guilt that he weighs or that can be imputed to him. Respect for the rule of law requires that what has not been condemned in court is not condemned on the street, ”he says, reinforcing that if the ex-socialist militant decided to actively participate in political life“ there is no right ”that slander and the defamations that have reigned over the past 17 years.
And he repeats the idea: “Paulo Pedroso was the victim of an ignoble accusation that justice itself considered so”.
Paulo Pedroso was Minister of Labor and Solidarity of the Government led by António Guterres. He was accused in Casa Pia for sexual abuse of minors, which is why he was accused. During the investigation phase, he was detained in the Assembly of the Republic and suspended the position of deputy. In 2006, in the investigative phase of the process, the Criminal Investigation Court found that there was no basis for being brought to trial.
He later won a lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights, which condemned the Portuguese State to compensate Paulo Pedroso in the amount of 68,555 euros. Before the last legislatures, in January 2020, Paulo Pedroso announced that he was no longer a member of the PS.
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