Othello Saraiva de Carvalho, general of the “Captain Movement” that overthrew the dictatorship on April 25, 1974 in Portugal, passed away today in Lisbon at the age of 84, announced Colonel Vasco Lorenzo, representative of the April captains.
“Othello”, as the Portuguese called him, died at the military hospital in Lisbon, where he was admitted, according to local media.
His funeral will take place next Wednesday, the Union said on April 25, the heir of the “captain movement”, explaining that he will be cremated.
“It has rightly become one of the symbols” of the Revolution that “ended the longest dictatorship of the 20th century in Europe, paving the way for democracy,” the office of Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said in a statement. his “operational skills” as well as his “commitment and generosity”.
Defense Minister Joao Gomez Crainho paid tribute to him for his “role in conquering freedom”.
Commander Othello de Carvalho, the “military mastermind” of the Carnation Revolution, led in anonymity the captains’ uprising that ended in one morning, with almost no bloodshed, in more than 40 years of Salazar’s dictatorship.
Freedom of expression, universal suffrage, equal opportunities for men and women, the right to strike, social security for all; the Portuguese were then discovering democracy.
Othello was born in Mozambique in 1936 and began his military career in the 1960s, when the country was embroiled in colonial wars.
After the Revolution, his popularity gave him hope for a weighty political role, and he ran twice in the presidential election, in 1976 as a candidate for popular organizations and in 1980 as the leader of a far-left movement.
A dissident and controversial figure, he was sentenced in 1987 to 15 years in prison for moral complicity in far-left attacks, then pardoned in 1996. He was accused of participating in the secret FP-25 movement involved in several deadly attacks from 1980 to 1987.
The terrible child of the Revolution, who spent five years in prison, always declared his innocence and condemned the violence, but he had admitted that he was the instigator of a “comprehensive plan” aimed at seizing power from the workers.
“It played a perverted and disastrous role in the period following April 25,” the far-right Chega party said in a statement.
The April Captain, who “caused and has caused deep divisions in Portuguese society,” was “a front-line protagonist at a critical juncture in modern Portuguese history,” Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo admitted in a statement to Souza.
The conservative head of state also clarified that it is “too early” for “history to be able to judge him from the necessary distance”.
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