Ba wrote on social media in 2020 that Mario Machado, founder of several extreme-right movements in Portugal, was “one of the main figures in the murder of Alcindo Monteiro”, a Black man who was beaten to death in 1995 by skinheads in a wider, violent racist attack.
Machado, 46, was part of the group of skinheads who took to Lisbon’s streets on June 10, 1995, to attack Black people and was found guilty of inflicting “bodily harm” on other Black people, but not Monteiro, on the same night.
Monteiro, 27, died from his injuries. The court ruling convicting the 11 of Monteiro’s murder also said each individual who took part in the attacks on that night was responsible for the “event’s entirety”.
So, anti anti-racism activist basically repeats what the convicting court said, and gets hit with a fine for it.
Is that "basically repated" from the court ruling?
There is a difference between "being responsible" and "being one of the main figures"
I mean... it isn't far-fetched to assume that a leading figure in that scene at large will be a leading figure when it comes to individual crimes and he is probably right, yet, if the Portugese court system works even remotely like the systems I know, then the fact that Machado wasn't convicted - whatever his responsibility - means that he - at least for the judicial system (in dubio pro reo and all) - cannot have been in a main role and calling him that can be defamatory, at least as far as evidence goes.
What really angers me more than the judge (who probably went "Fuck, we all know he's right but there is no proof, so I have to fine the guy, for fuck's sake!") is the Nazi asshat who happily partook (in whatever role) in the murder of an inncoent man because they refused to use the gray matter evolution had given them and instead relied on their teeny tiny lizard brains who told then that different is bad and then got butthurt and fucking sued someone for calling him out on a tiny detail.
God, this makes me fucking angry... I... I need to go outside and yell at clouds for a bit... be right back!
This just boils down to the semantics of exactly what being a “main figure in a murder” exactly means.
If the man was murdered during the event, and the judge says that anyone involved in the event is responsible for the event’s entirety, then by the judge’s own reasoning Machado is guilty of the murder. If Machado was a main figure in the event in any way, it could thus be construed that he was also a main figure of anything that happened during the event, again by the judge’s own reasoning.
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