Court postpones Luís Amorim trial to analyze extra evidence

Luís Amorim

The legal action filed against the MSAR in 2012 by the family of Luís Amorim – a Portuguese teenager who died under suspicious circumstances in Macau – had an initial hearing scheduled for yesterday at the Administrative Court.  However, the trial session was postponed due to the Public Prosecutions Office’s (MP) claims to have received additional images of the two autopsies performed on Amorim’s body, along with other evidence.
The teenager was found dead under the Nobre de Carvalho Bridge, lying on Avenue Sun Yat Sen, on September 30, 2007. In an initial investigation phase, the local police labeled the case as a suicide. But such a conclusion failed to convince Amorim’s parents, who firmly believed their son wouldn’t have committed suicide.
At the parents’ request, the Portuguese Judiciary Police conducted a separate investigation. The investigation and second autopsy, made in Portugal in 2010, point to a case of homicide.  Since then, four Portuguese forensic physicians have ruled out suicide as the reason behind the death. The second autopsy came to cast serious doubts over the accuracy of the first examination, performed in Macau, as forensic experts found injuries “incompatible with a fall from a height.” They concluded that such serious injuries, namely bruises on the neck and the abdomen, could not have been caused by the teenager’s fall from the bridge.
Prior to that, the National Institute of Forensic Medicine had also analyzed the boy’s clothes, which, according to Pedro Redinha, had never been subject to proper analysis in Macau. The report on this forensics examination concluded that some buttons had been ripped off and that he had a torn shirt.  Damage was also found to a metallic part of his belt. Such damage was more consistent with a fight rather than a fall from a bridge, the experts reported.
The family is not hoping for a re-opening of the case, as after six years, results may be difficult to achieve. They are instead asking the court for compensation amounting to MOP15 million, alleging that gross errors were committed during the investigation conducted by local authorities.
The MP states that the 31 new documents received on Jan 19 need to be reviewed in order to assess their “admissibility” and “substance.”  According to the family’s lawyer, Mr Redinha, the motives alleged by the MP to postpone the session are acceptable, but pointed out that one of the key witnesses, namely the president of the Portuguese National Institute of Forensic Medicine, Duarte Nuno Vieira, has a very tight schedule and is supposed to give his testimony in Macau.
Over 20 witnesses are expected to be heard by the Administrative Court. The trial has been postponed to March 11, and two other sessions are scheduled for March 18 and April 15. MDT/Lusa