1980 Camarate air crash

Camarate air crash

Cessna 421, similar to the aircraft involved
Incident summary
Date	4 December 1980
Summary	Fuel exhaustion (official conclusion, disputed)
Site	Camarate, Lisbon, Portugal.
Passengers	5
Crew	2
Survivors	0
Aircraft type	Cessna 421
Registration	YV-314-P
Flight origin	Lisbon Portela Airport, Lisbon
Destination	Francisco de Sá Carneiro Airport, Porto

The 1980 Camarate air crash occurred on 4 December 1980 when a small private aircraft carrying Portuguese Prime Minister Francisco de Sá Carneiro and Defense Minister Adelino Amaro da Costa crashed in Camarate, Lisbon, Portugal. Initial investigations concluded the incident was an accident, but later parliamentary investigations found evidence of a bomb beneath the cockpit. After the 15-year statute of limitations took effect, several people came forward confessing involvement.

Following the 1974 Carnation Revolution, Francisco de Sá Carneiro had been elected Prime Minister on 3 January 1980, and Adelino Amaro da Costa became the first civilian Defense Minister. They were on their way to an election rally three days before the Portuguese presidential election, 1981. Da Costa had chartered a Cessna for the trip; Sá Carneiro had intended to travel by other means, and joined the trip at the last minute.

The Cessna 421A Golden Eagle, a private aircraft chartered by da Costa, crashed shortly after take-off from Lisbon Portela Airport. Witnesses saw the aircraft trailing debris before hitting high-voltage power lines and crashing in a fireball.

The incident was subject to many investigations. The initial investigation by the aviation authority concluded the crash was an accident caused by a lack of fuel in one of the tanks. The final police report in 1981 ruled out criminal actions. In 1983 the Attorney General suspended the investigation. Parliamentary investigations in 1990 and 1991 did not lead to a re-opening of the case, but after the fifth parliamentary inquiry in 1995, the case was re-opened.

For the 1995 re-opening of the judicial investigation, the victims' bodies were exhumed, and a forensic report concluded that there had probably not been an explosion on the aircraft, although the possibility was not ruled out. After interviewing José Esteves, who later said he had manufactured a device for the attack, the criminal proceedings were suspended. A private prosecution launched by victims' relatives was declared time-barred in 1996, with the exception of one alleged conspirator, L.R., who was detained in Brazil on other matters, leading the 15-year time limit to be suspended in his case. In 1998 a district court judge in the L.R. private prosecution reaffirmed that the incident had been an accident, a decision upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2000 with an 800-page judgement. An attempt to re-open the case against L.R. in 2001 on grounds of new evidence was judged time-barred. Legal challenges were dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2006, and an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights was made in 2007 alleging breach of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the grounds that the case had become time-barred due to the negligence of the Portuguese authorities. The Court concluded in 2011 "that the substance of their right of access to a court had not been impaired by any negligence or failure to act on the part of the competent authorities".