The 71-year-old defendant, under house arrest with electronic monitoring, has also been sentenced to a three-year ban on contacting the victim, either personally or through intermediaries.
The collective court ruled that the defendant must compensate the victim with 8,000 euros.
In October of the previous year, the Public Security Police (PSP) announced the arrest of the suspect for domestic violence against a 72-year-old woman in Leiria.
A PSP statement indicated that the man had allegedly “attacked the victim’s physical integrity” in March of the same year and was suspected of repeating the act in October, “using a knife” this time.
The ruling from Thursday, accessed today by Lusa, notes that over the past 10 years, the couple’s relationship deteriorated as the “defendant became unemployed and uninterested in finding a new occupation.”
The panel of judges found that the man insulted and threatened the woman’s life, causing her fear and anxiety regarding her physical safety and life.
In March 2024, following a confrontation, the man assaulted and attempted to strangle the victim, who had given pre-trial testimony.
According to the judges, after this incident, the woman continued to live in the same residence as the defendant, albeit in separate rooms.
The couple divorced at the beginning of October that year, agreeing that the woman would leave the residence a week later due to fears for her physical safety and life.
However, during this period, one night, the man entered the victim’s room wielding a large kitchen knife, pressing its tip against her stomach. The victim attempted multiple times to take it from him, sustaining injuries in the process.
The court also confirmed that the defendant “acted with the intention, fulfilled and repeated, of physically and psychologically harming the victim, affecting her physical and psychological well-being, tranquility, personal honor, and dignity.”
The ruling further reads that the man, having no criminal record and remaining silent during the trial, acted with the “intent to kill his ex-wife, a plan thwarted only by external factors and her successful struggle to remove the knife from his hands.”
