The government does not know whether or not there was a theft of arms and explosives from military stores near Santarém.
Catarina Martins, (pictured), the Left Bloc leader, said today that "We can not have the Government saying that it does not know if there was or not a theft from Tancos."
Martins has demanded some clarification from the Minister of Defence on the disappearance of the military armaments.
The minister in charge has stated, somewhat weakly, that there may not have been a theft after all.
"As we have no visual proof, no eye-witness account and no admissions of guilt, we can only say that the material no longer exists,” said Azeredo Lopes who already has informed NATO allies of the theft, but has released few details under the old chestnut of, 'not wanting to prejudice the inquiry.'
The CDS-PP has already announced that it will propose for Tuesday's meeting of the National Defence Commission that a hearing with Azeredo Lopes, scheduled for September 20th, will include questions the Tancos military base and the missing equipment.
Azeredo Lopes requested a report back in June when the equipment was found to have vanished from the poorly secured military site, a base whose security arrangements he considered as “reasonable.”
Lopes also indicated that the General Inspectorate has detected the need to implement three fundamental improvements, to storage systems, to surveillance cameras which have not worked for years, and to information systems and their management.
This means, said Lopes, "to have an instantaneous, up-to-date knowledge of everything that is in the stores to avoid in the future what happened at Tancos."
Among the weapons listed as missing are:
- 1,450 9mm ammunition cartridges
- 150 hand grenades
- 44 anti-tank grenades
- 18 tear gas grenades
- 102 explosive charges
- 264 pieces of plastic explosive
