Interpol has caught up with the now 29-year-old former Lagos nurse evading a 23-year jail term for her role in the savage murder of a young IT technician.
Mariana Fonseca went on the run last year when it was finally clear that she had exhausted all avenues of appeal against her almost full-life sentence.
At the time, tabloid newspapers surmised that she would flee to a country that did not have an extradition agreement with Portugal.
Perhaps she was under the impression that Indonesia would not extradite her if she was found*; perhaps she was living (and working) under an assumed identity, and believed she was safe.
Whatever her reasoning, reports today explain that Mariana Fonseca has been in a holding cell since yesterday after Indonesian authorities exercised an international arrest warrant issued by Portugal.
She will now remain in jail until the extradition process – requested by the Portuguese Consulate and being handled by PJ judicial police – comes through.
Correio da Manhã reveals that Fonseca was ‘located by the PJ, and caught in a café where she had been working for months as she spoke English well’. The paper carries an Instagram clip of the arrest.
This news will come a welcome relief to the family of victim Diogo Gonçalves – who was not only targeted because he had recently come into the sum of €70,000 (following the death of his mother), but whose body was butchered post-mortem – parts disposed of in different parts of the Algarve.
This was always the most bizarre of murders. Fonseca claimed she was under the influence of her then ‘lover’, Maria Malveiro, who was initially the only one of the two condemned – and who has long since taken her own life in jail.
Fonseca, to the shock of public prosecutors, was ‘absolved of wrongdoing’ – but later found guilty on prosecutors’ appeal.
Her story, up until now, has read very much like something from a film. It remains to be seen if this really is the ‘final scene’. If it is, Fonseca will be on her way home to Portugal very soon, and straight into jail for the next 23 years.
*UPDATE: Correio da Manhã has explained that Indonesia does not have an extradition agreement with Portugal. However, Mariana Fonseca will be ‘deported’ due to the fact that she has been working illegally in the country. The deportation process will not be particularly quick. The paper on Sunday was suggesting it could take “weeks”.
Source material: Correio da Manhã/ SIC Notícias
