Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho

Otelo Nuno Romão Saraiva de Carvalho, GCL (; 31 August 1936 – 25 July 2021) was a Portuguese military officer. He was the chief strategist of the 1974 Carnation Revolution, and later became a terrorist leader.

After the Revolution, Otelo assumed leadership roles in the first Portuguese Provisional Governments, alongside Vasco Gonçalves and Francisco da Costa Gomes, and as the head of military defense force COPCON. In 1976, Otelo ran in the first Portuguese presidential election, in which he placed second with the base of his support coming from the far-left. Otelo was tried and sentenced for being a leading member of the terrorist group Forças Populares 25 de Abril, which killed 20 people in several terrorist attacks. The Constitutional Court reverted the sentence due to unconstitutionality, as the newly formed body did not agree with the other courts interpretation of the legal code in face of the new constitution, and wanted a full retrial by the same judges.

To solve the impasse, the Portuguese Parliament voted an amnesty for political crimes in 1996 as there was no perspective of juridical solution in "useful time", in adherence to Portugal's statute of limitations. Besides this reasoning, the amnesty was promoted by President Mário Soares as a gesture of democratic reconciliation as it erased the political crimes by far left and far right. He was further trialled for the assassinations, but was acquitted. The judge in charge claimed that it was certain that the terrorist FP-25 group had committed the attacks, but not enough admissible proofs indicated the authoring of the crimes for individual convictions.

Thousands paid respect at his funeral in 2021, including the president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the prime-minister António Costa and the president of the parliament Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues. At the time, the parliament highlighted his role in April 1974 as a "liberator of Portugal". Provided by Wikipedia