PGR clarifies that no arrest warrant has been issued for the priest from Funchal and that he cannot be detained by the prosecutor’s office.

The Attorney General’s Office came this Friday to explain why it did not receive Funchal priest Anastasio Alves, who disappeared in 2018 after being prosecuted for crimes of sexual assault.

“In the process, the titular magistrate did not determine the issue of national or international warrants of arrest, therefore it is impossible to detain the accused, who, by the way, was never, in the opinion of the lawyers present, a vehicle as the reason for his trip to PGR,” the message says. Prosecutor General’s Office.

In the same footnote, PGR explains that notification by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (OP) of an accusation against a former priest of Madeira “is a procedural act that must be carried out within a specific process”, and this refers to the conditions in the Department of Investigations and Actions (DIAP) in Funchal.

PGR also highlights that Anastasio Alves formally accepted the status of a defendant when the indictment was issued in March 2022.

According to a memo posted on the Parliamentarian’s website in January this year, when the request for international judicial cooperation was issued, the former Madeiran priest was charged with four offenses of child sexual abuse and one offense of sexual intercourse with a teenager. steps have been taken to locate him in France and Portugal, which are “to no avail”.

In September 2018, while Father Anastasio Alves was working in France, the Diocese of Funchal announced its exclusion from pastoral work on suspicion of sexual abuse of a minor in the autonomous region.