The Jewish community in Porto last week submitted a lawsuit to the civil court in Lisbon, in which it asks for compensation in the amount of 10 million euros from the state. Community representatives say that in 2022 the community and its leaders fell victim to "political aggression" by the prosecutors' office and the police in Lisbon . According to the indictment, the actions taken by the attorney general and the police in Portugal generated tens of thousands of messages of hate against the community on social networks and in the press, and about a million posts on social media platforms associating the name of the community with the word corruption, which fatally damaged any future ability of the community to raise donations for its religious and cultural activities.
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A few weeks earlier, the community submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECHR) a petition against the Portuguese government, describing a series of "brutal actions" against the community and damage to its good name and accusing Portuguese authorities of flagrantly violating the European Convention on Human Rights.
The lawsuit against the Portuguese government was filed with the European Court of Human Rights by a team of lawyers led by Dr. Haim Katz and Shmuel Katz, on behalf of the Jewish community in Porto. It accuses the government of nothing less than "a 21st-century blood libel."
According to the indictment and the petition, on March 11, 2022, the Office of the Attorney General and the police in Portugal distributed a joint announcement that the two bodies were investigating crimes committed by the Jewish community in Porto: criminal association, corruption, forgery, tax fraud and money laundering.
Claims against Roman Abramovich's passport have not been proven
The Jewish communities in Porto and Lisbon were authorized by the government of Portugal, as part of passage of the "Spanish Law" in 2015, to check and confirm the Spanish and Portuguese origin of Jewish citizenship applicants. To date, about 120,000 Israelis have applied to these communities and about 60,000 have been approved for and received Portuguese citizenship.
The case that ignited the aggressive moves against the community centered on reports in the Portuguese media that Russian businessman and oligarch, Roman Abramovich, a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin who at that time had started the war against Ukraine, illegally received confirmation of his Spanish-Jewish origin from the Porto Jewish community. The Spanish heritage claim was never presented with any evidence and, in fact, it was proven to be incorrect by the community.
Both the indictment and the lawsuit describe how the rabbi of the community was arrested and how a humiliating search was conducted inside the community's institutions, including the Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue - considered the largest in the Iberian Peninsula, the Jewish Museum and the homes of the community leaders.
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Billionaire Roman Abramovich requested and received Portuguese citizenship
(Photo: EPA)
"Without meeting the minimum threshold required to prevent violations of human rights, millions of documents and private correspondence related to the community and its members were taken from the community's institutions, just as the Inquisition did when it incriminated elements of the Jewish community and invaded their homes and workplaces, based on anonymous complaints," according to the lawsuit.
Gabriel Sandrovich, president of the Jewish community in Porto, said that "the organization cannot forgive the fact that, based on anonymous denunciations, our synagogue was trampled by 15 armed policemen, and the humiliating and violent search in the home of the vice-president of the community, the granddaughter of the 'Portuguese Dreyfus' and a respected economist in her 70s, looking for 'bags of cash'."
According to the indictment, the public announcement by the attorney general and the police immediately created a wave of antisemitic hatred against the Jewish community and Jews were accused of "mafioso conduct," "corruption" and "selling out the state." This atmosphere terrorized the families of the community members who found themselves persecuted and personally attacked, to the point where the community was forced to secure its institutions.
The leadership of the community claims that its good name has been irreparably damaged and that even the fact that the Court of Appeals in Lisbon already determined in September 2022 that the suspicions of the attorney general and the police were "based on nothing" failed to change their situation and restore the good name of the community.
"It was an illegal hunting expedition in which the state used the power in its hands in a futile effort to find every shred of evidence against the most powerful Jewish community in Portugal. This expedition was joined by various political forces in Portugal, who sought to cancel the 2013/15 nationality law that allowed Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin to claim citizenship," the community wrote.
Meanwhile, a precedent-setting decision was made last week in the court in Porto in the case of Ravid Aryeh Katz, who was murdered by Hamas. The hearing on the request of a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, who was considered a hostage for over 50 days until his body was identified, was submitted in an urgent procedure with the aim of speeding up his Portuguese citizenship, in case Hamas decided to release citizens with foreign citizenship.
After his death, the court made a precedential decision stating that the order expanding the nationality law and making it difficult for descendants and deportees from Spain and Portugal to obtain citizenship is illegal. The court ordered the local Interior Ministry official to continue the registration of the citizenship of the late Ravid Aryeh Katz.
At the same time, Portugal's Parliament of Portugal is working these days on a quick move to completely cancel the "Spanish law" before the government and parliament dissolves on January 15, before the elections in the country. The Jewish community in Porto has already addressed this with the Parliament and the President of the Republic, sending a message that any change in the law at this time is illegal.