The extraordinary story of Mariana Fonseca – the baby-faced ‘killer nurse’ on the run from a 23-year jail term for her part in a savage murder – has just taken a new turn: the deportation planned by Portuguese authorities is now in question because Fonseca has been legally working in Indonesia (where she was arrested last week), and travelled there ‘correctly’.
Due to the (habitual) delays in the Portuguese justice system, Fonseca managed to leave the country last year before an international arrest warrant for her capture was issued.
She only ended up being arrested because her family was ‘tracked’ when they left Portugal recently to visit her.
“They tried alternative routes so as not to call attention to themselves, but the PJ managed to locate them”, writes Correio da Manhã today – and that is how Interpol ended up moving in on the young woman as she worked a shift in a Jakarta café.
Initially, the story was that ‘as there is no extradition agreement between Indonesia and Portugal’, Fonseca would be deported as an illegal alien.
Except that she is not an illegal alien.
It then transpired that the 29-year-old has a legal visa to work in Indonesia – and so it will be up to judicial authorities in that country to decide whether or not they concede to the demands of Portuguese authorities, or whether they accept the arguments of the 29-year-old former nurse who, it has to be remembered, persuaded one set of judges in Portugal to find her ‘not guilty’ of murder in an initial trial after she blamed everything on her former ‘lover’ who has since committed suicide in Tires women’s prison.
For now, CM explains that Mariana Fonseca “is opposing extradition”.
Portuguese authorities will be doing their utmost to chalk this episode up as ‘a win’ for justice, the failings of which will otherwise become once again horribly exposed.
For readers who may not recall this particular case, Fonseca and her ‘former lover’, Maria Malveiro, conspired to steal the €70,000 inheritance of a young man who was ‘a friend’ of Malveiro. Their plan involved strangling him; decapitating and dismembering him; cutting off one of his fingers to access his mobile phone (for banking details) – and then disposing of various body parts in different parts of the Algarve.
Source: Correio da Manhã
