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compelent to protect private companies operating in the sector, and there were many private companies operating in the sector. There was an uncertainty about whether competence for enforcement of international arms trafficking embargoes would be the Ministry of Defense, if the war surpluses could be exported uncensored to war theaters and ongoing operutions, namely African war theaters and the war Iran / Iraq'

Asked if the situation of uncertainty covered those who had the authority to insure the embargo of arms, which was defined internationally and to which the country was committed, answered:

«I think that in the content of that conversation there was this concern. It is obvious that the embargo (...) would have to be executed by the Portuguese Government, and therefore it would be up to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ensure compliance with these guidelines of international law. But what is certain is that the boundary of what was luufUL and what was illicit would not be very clear ».

Asked who, al the institutional level, the then Minister of Defense would have placed this question, Júlio Castro Caldas contextualized the moment that was then lived as follows:

The information systems that existed at the time were military systems and had obvious political contamination, with huge suspicion of the links that existed in the systems military with the previous information system we knew, which, let us call it at name, it was the International State Defense Police (PIDE). So, deep down, there was a effort to decontaminate this influence, since the prosecution and trial of the agents of the former PIDE and that effort was a military effort, as they were tried in military courts. So that (it is recognized] how military structures are resilient to changes, suffice it 10 say that it was in my Ministry, 30 years later, that ended compulsory military service, which drafted the Code of Military Justice, which regulated the Military Discipline Regulation and that the competences were established specific to the Military Judicial Police. Therefore, at the time it could be discussed whether, perhaps, there had been no political declaration by the Government that they considered accident. And this statement, that they considered the occurrence an accident, is the first imponderable act of political contamination because it completely discourages

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investigation of any police effort, be it the Military Judicial Police, be it the Judiciary Police. Therefore, this first political contamination of the investigation made, in a Republic ihar had a notable organizational institutional weakness in the field of exercise judicial power - I remind the Honorable Members then the judicial power is practically untouched since the chapter on judicial power in the Constitution was written as was - for the Government, an enormous difficulty in dealing with two of the most resilient to change, that is, the judiciary and the military system. And therefore, I'm not bee to be able to know if, in the Minister Council chuired by Dr. Sá Carneiro, this would have been approached. I admit that yes, it is predictable thai yes. It is predictable, in particular, that Prof. Freitas do Amaral, who was always very concerned with these issues and who was the author of the first national defense law, if it had contrasted with the difficulties that the