At a hearing before the panel of judges at São João Novo Court in Porto, Alexander Pereira revealed that he faked the theft of a bank card from a colleague to get expelled from the Air Force. He admitted to orchestrating this act to avoid paying a fine that would arise if he willingly terminated his contract and to escape from the hazing rituals he could no longer endure.
Pereira is one of two former soldiers who allegedly suffered violent hazing at the hands of ten former Air Force personnel between 2018 and 2019 at Air Base No. 5 – Monte Real in Leiria.
Detailing the incident, Alexander Pereira explained that he withdrew money from an ATM at the Air Base to ensure he would be captured on camera.
“A month later I was expelled, thank God,” he stated.
When questioned about why he didn’t simply leave the Air Force if he was unhappy, Pereira emphasized that after enduring the hazing, he was unwilling to pay the Air Force the required penalty for leaving.
The former soldier disclosed that throughout his roughly eight-month tenure at the Air Base, he was subjected to daily violent hazing, never confiding in anyone as he believed the abuse would cease eventually.
“But it didn’t stop. Whether on duty or off, they always forced me to do things,” he highlighted.
Among the tasks he was forced to do were, as he described, eating dog food, drinking water from the animals’ bowls, cleaning the recreation room, consuming alcohol, using condoms to pick up animal waste, and being locked in a dog transport cage in the service vehicle driven around.
Pereira recounted that he was kept awake for more than 72 hours and was made to wear a dog collar, stay under a desk, and was threatened with a gun to his head while being shown the genital organs of others.
This trial pertains to incidents that occurred between May 2018 and September 2019, perpetrated by ten ex-military personnel (rank and file), specializing in Air Police, who were assigned at the time to the K-9 unit and Intervention Teams as part of the Protection and Security Squadron — EPA.
The two ex-soldiers, now 27 years old, and the accused, aged between 28 and 35, have since left the Air Force.
The indictment describes how the ten ex-military personnel “repeatedly, in cooperation and executing a pre-planned strategy,” carried out a so-called “integration/teaching process.” The defendants believed the two former soldiers “demonstrated a level of performance below the standard,” justifying their practices as an attempt to “integrate them to improve or assimilate daily service procedures.”
