Mário Lemos Pires

Mário Lemos Pires (30 June 1930 – 22 May 2009) was a Major-general of the Portuguese Army and the last colonial governor of Portuguese Timor.

Born in Lamego, Portugal in 1930, Lemos Pires moved to Lisbon at age 18 to commence his studies at the Portuguese Military Academy. Following his graduation as an officer, he took up various overseas postings in the Portuguese Overseas Empire. In the 1960s Lemos Pires was posted to Algeria (then a French colony), where he studied French military counter-guerrilla techniques.

After Algeria he was posted as part of the 114th Battalion to Portuguese Angola, which was in the midst of a conflict for independence, and where he took part in the early stages of the early colonial war. By the late 1960s, he was posted back to Portugal, where he administer physical education programs for the army, but was soon sent to Portuguese Guinea, under the command of Military Governor António de Spínola, raising to the rank of colonel.

On 14 November 1974, Lemos Pires was appointed by the new Portuguese Government (following the Carnation Revolution) as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the overseas province of Portuguese Timor. Posted to what was thought to be one of the more peaceful Portuguese territories, Lemos Pires found himself in the middle of a brewing conflict in Timor, while charged by the government to prepare Timor for independence. One of his first decrees made upon his arrival in Dili was to legalise political parties in preparation for elections to a Constituent Assembly in 1976.

...
Wikipedia