Court orders municipality of Gondomar to unearth over 1,000 dead

The mayor of Gondomar said this Friday that he is in “a state of shock” from a verdict ordering the municipality to dig up more than a thousand dead from the cemetery, calling the decision “illegal and senseless.”

In an interview with Lusa, Marco Martins said that the Chamber of Gondomar in the Oporto region would appeal against this verdict “until the final consequences”, given that “among other things” the court did not take into account the “sentimental side”. question.”

“I am in a state of shock, completely incredulous. With all due respect to Justice, this decision has neither a head nor a tail, it does not take into account the sentimental side of the issue and, moreover, it is illegal, ”Marko said. Martins.

According to the Jornal de Notícias (JN) published this Friday, a section of the Rio Tinto N. squares cemetery that had five owners and was sold to the municipality by a real estate company as “free from encumbrances or encumbrances”.

However, says JN, the court proved that the 1,757-square-meter section of the cemetery was not gratuitous and could not be sold to the council because it did not belong to the person who made the original sale. .

Socialist Marco Martins argued that “according to the law, no body can be exhumed within three years of its burial, so the sentence is not enforceable.”

For this reason, he assured, “the chamber will appeal to the Court of Appeal, will go to the last consequences and regret the social anxiety caused by the decision of the court.”

In a decision this Friday, reported by JN, the court dismisses the municipality’s argument that the land on which this cemetery operates is in the public domain, leading to the enforcement of a 2019 judgment that obliges the municipality to return those lands as such. , as they were, that is, without cemetery structures, including more than a thousand dead buried there.