Behind bars for more than six weeks, former prime minister José Sócrates has given first TV interview from Évora jail – with ready answers to all the apparent allegations levelled against him.
Forbidden to talk face-to-face to journalists, Sócrates replied in writing to the list of questions put by TVI, declaring his detention in preventive custody was not only illegal, but a “cowardly act of aggression”, “pure invention” and “an imaginative cascade of presumptions”.
In an opening personal statement aired last night (Friday), Sócrates claimed that he was giving the interview in “legitimate self-defence against the systemic and criminal violation of secrecy of justice, and against the dissemination of manipulated, defamatory and false “information” that has plunged his “judgement” into the public market place”.
As has been endlessly pointed out since Sócrates incarceration, there have still been no charges made against him, yet newspapers carry “allegations” and scenarios of corrupt practices by the day.
Taking these by the horns, Sócrates explained that he had not been “confronted with any facts, or even proof” of corrupt practices when he was interrogated by super-judge Carlos Alexandre before being escorted through the gates of Évora jail.
And while his incarceration was purportedly to leave the way clear for Operation Marquês to go ahead uncompromised, Sócrates claims it was also designed to “terrorise, depersonalise” and generally shut him up.
Thus maintaining that he is a victim of political persecution, Sócrates set the scene for what many see will be his eventual release: preventive custody for so long without any charges being levelled certainly seems to go against the principle of innocence until proven guilty.
Dismissing all the allegations put to him by TVI, the interview failed to query how Sócrates businessman friend Carlos Santos Silva – also in preventive custody – came to benefit from so much government business put his way during the years Sócrates was in positions of power.
Elsewhere this morning, Correio da Manhã – the newspaper that publishes almost daily “exclusives” on Sócrates’ purported dirty-dealings – writes that he has told his long-term friend, millionaire football boss Jorge Pinto da Costa that he wants “vengeance” against “whoever is responsible” for his ongoing prison ordeal.
