Jewish community sues Portugal for ‘humiliating’ arrest of rabbi, police searches of synagogue

Jewish community of Porto sues government for 10 million Euros, claiming leaders were targets of ‘political aggression.’

By World Israel News Staff

The Jewish community of Porto filed a lawsuit with the Lisbon Civil Court last week, seeking €10 million in damages from the state.

According to a representative of the community, in 2022 the community and its leaders fell victim to what a spokesperson called “political aggression” by prosecutors and police in Lisbon.

According to the lawsuit, the measures taken by the attorney general and police in Portugal have led to tens of thousands of messages of hatred against the community on social media and in the press, about a million online publications linking the community’s name to the word ‘corruption,’ and severely harmed the community’s future ability of to raise funds for its religious and cultural activities.

A few weeks earlier the community filed a petition with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg against the Portuguese government, describing a series of “brutal actions” against the community, and damage to its reputation in flagrant violation of the European Convention on Human Rights by the Portuguese authorities.

The petition was filed with the ECHR by a team of lawyers headed by Dr. Haim Katz and Shmuel Katz on behalf of the Porto Jewish community against the Portuguese government, which the community accuses of nothing less than a “21st century blood libel.”

According to the petition, on March 11, 2022, the Attorney General’s office and the Portuguese police issued a joint statement stating that the two bodies were investigating the Porto Jewish community for the following crimes: criminal association, corruption, forgery, tax fraud and money laundering.

The petition further details how the community’s rabbi was arrested and a humiliating and unexpected search was conducted at the community’s institutions – including the Kadoorie Mekor Haim synagogue, considered the largest synagogue in the Iberian Peninsula, the Jewish Museum and homes of community leaders. “Without meeting the minimum threshold required to prevent human rights abuses, millions of documents and private correspondence relating to the community and its members were taken from the community’s institutions, just as the Inquisition did when it framed members of the Jewish community and invaded their homes and workplaces, based on anonymous complaints”.

“The organization cannot forgive the fact that, on the basis of anonymous condemnations, our synagogue was trampled on by 15 policemen carrying weapons, and the humiliating and violent search of the home of the community’s vice president, granddaughter of the ‘Portuguese Dreyfus’ and a respected economist in her seventies, in search of ‘bags of cash,’” said Porto Jewish community president Gabriel Senderowicz.

According to the petition, the joint Attorney General-police public announcement immediately created a wave of anti-Semitic hatred against the Jewish community and its members, who were accused of “mafia conduct,” “corruption” and “selling the state.” These moves terrified the families of community members, who found themselves persecuted and personally attacked to the point where the community was forced to secure its institutions.

“All this was done on the basis of anonymous complaints, without a single piece of concrete evidence and, as later described by the Lisbon Court of Appeal’s judges in a September 27, 2022 decision, as ‘based on nothing,’ without a shred of evidentiary support and without evidence justifying the actions taken,” the petition read.

The events described in the petition “destroyed the good name of the Jewish community in Porto, Portugal and internationally. To date, there are more than a million online references linking the community’s name to corruption, and the community demands a correction and a public apology from the Portuguese government.”

The lawsuit explains that the legal goals of the Jewish community in Porto have always been to promote Judaism, Jewish culture and charity.

Thus, over the past decade the community has been engaged in building synagogues, cultural centers, kosher restaurants, a cemetery, a Holocaust museum, a Jewish museum and many more.

“If, God forbid, we need the help of Jewish philanthropy in the future, we will not be able to benefit from it because no one will want to be linked to the seal of criminality that was unlawfully stamped on our name and ‘based on nothing,’ in the words of the Lisbon Court of Appeal handed down in September 2022,” added Senderowicz.

“It was an illegal hunting expedition, in which the state used its power in a futile effort to find every shred of evidence against Portugal’s strongest Jewish community. This journey was joined by various political forces in Portugal who sought to repeal the Nationality Law of 2013/15, which allowed Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin to claim citizenship.”

“In order to prevent such arbitrary and forceful acts, the ECHR was established in Strasbourg, and the Porto Jewish community has a well-founded cause of action in its petition against the Portuguese government,” said Dr. Katz, who signed the lawsuit alongside the president of the Porto Jewish community, Gabriel Senderowicz.

AntisemitismPortugal