Case of Amadeu Oliveira: Constitutional Court considers it legal to lift immunity for detention of the deputy

The judges of the Constitutional Court decided not to declare the unconstitutionality and illegality of the resolution of the Permanent Commission of the National Assembly that lifted the immunity aimed at detaining deputy Amadeu Oliveira, elected by the UCID.

The decision was taken seven months after a group of 15 deputies decided to proceed, on May 5, 2022, to the Constitutional Court (TC), requesting a request for successive abstract inspection to analyze the case, as they understood that, contrary to what was foreseen according to the law, Amadeu Oliveira was held in preventive detention, without a final decision, which they considered mandatory for the detention of a deputy outside the flagrante delicto.

The deputies' response was related to doubts about the legality of the decision taken in July 2021 by the Permanent Commission of the National Assembly, at the request of the Attorney General's Office (PGR), to lift the deputy's immunity to be heard in one of the proceedings in which he was indicted, having been held in preventive detention.

Now, almost two years later, the collective of TC judges decided last Wednesday, 01, not to declare the unconstitutionality and illegality of the resolution of the Permanent Commission of the National Assembly.

A critic of the country's justice system and the author of the escape from the archipelago of a man convicted of murder, the lawyer was also arrested on 18 July.

Two days later, the Barlavento Court of Appeal, on the island of São Vicente, applied preventive detention to Amadeu Oliveira, who was elected deputy in April 2022 on the lists of the Independent and Democratic Cabo Verdean Union (UCID), the third political force in parliament, with four deputies.

Taken to trial, the panel of judges of the Court of Appeal of Barlavento, which judged the case, sentenced the deputy to a sentence of seven years in prison, which resulted from the legal accumulation of the conviction for two of the four crimes that Oliveira was accused of , since he was acquitted of the crime of coercion or disruption of the functioning of a Sovereignty Body and of one of the two crimes of offending a legal person.

The conviction of Amadeu Oliveira for a crime of responsibility also implies, according to the judgment, the loss of mandate as a deputy to the National Assembly.

The court also determined that when the conviction becomes effective (transit in rem judicata) the defendant will be prevented from being re-elected and from holding any other political office for a period of four years, counting from the end of the seven years of effective imprisonment.

Amadeu Oliveira was also sentenced to pay the costs of the process, which was set at 118,000 escudos, and will remain under the coercive measure of preventive detention until a final decision is reached.

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