A 30-year-old mother facing 16 years behind bars appears to have skipped the country, taking her eight-year-old son with her.
The story is yet another example of how the Portuguese appeals process can leave people found guilty of almost anything free to ‘fight for justice of a more acceptable kind’… or simply disappear.
In this case, Ana Grácio appears to have evaded all kinds of issues since Christmas.
Her ex-partner, and the father of her son, says the last time he spoke with his child was December 27. They were meant to spend New Year’s Eve together, but since then Luís Vieira has failed to make contact.
“I have tried all possible (phone numbers) and I am very worried”, he told reporters, accepting that his child “may no longer be in Portugal”.
Vieira did not want to discuss his former partner’s crimes, saying they were part of a “very delicate situation” in which he really did not know what had happened.
Ana Grácio was condemned for qualified murder in following the fatal beating of a 23-year-old Romanian outside a Leiria discotheque in 2012.
She was one of five former security guards arrested in a case that involves as many as 21 ‘official suspects’, including the former boss of the purportedly illegal security company, a man known as “Bebé” suspected of various crimes, including tax evasion and money laundering.
Grácio received her 16 year and three months sentence in 2015, adds the paper, but has remained free “due to her presentation of successive appeals and the fact that the case (centering on ‘mafias of the night’) has still not been concluded”.
Indeed, the next court date is due this week, says the paper.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
