A Portuguese deputy from the far right is accused of having stolen several suitcases on the carpets of the airports of Lisbon and Ponta Delgada, in the archipelago of the Azores, which earned him the expulsion of his parliamentary group, announced Friday his party.
At the opening of the parliamentary session, the president of the assembly, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, asked the elected Miguel Arruda to sit in the last rank of the hemicycle, as is the practice for unaccompanied deputies.
Heckled by his former colleagues from the Chega Party, the 40 -year -old deputy decided to stay in the assembly as an independent despite the scandal around him, while asking for the lifting of his parliamentary immunity.
“I am in the process of being crucified in the public square (…) but, until proven otherwise, I am innocent,” said the elected representative of the Azores district, Thursday evening on TVI TV.
According to several local media, police arrested him on Tuesday at Lisbon airport and he was indicted for theft of luggage, some of which were found at his home.
“Faced with this situation, as a party president (…) I cannot allow him to stay in the parliamentary group,” the president of Chega, André Ventura said on Thursday, after a Meeting with Mr. Arruda.
-Still according to the press, the investigators would have images of overwhelming video surveillance cameras showing the deputy in the process of seizing the luggage of other passengers and taking them in the toilet in order to place them in his own suitcase.
The interested party defended himself by suggesting that it could be images generated by artificial intelligence.
Some media reported that Mr. Arruda would have sold the contents of the suitcases he stole on a platform for the sale and purchase of used clothing and objects.
The public prosecutor “confirms only the completion of steps within the framework of an investigation (…) relating to facts without any relation to the functions he exercises,” a spokesperson for AFP said on Friday at AFP General prosecution of the Republic.
