“We are waiting for that notification with great calm. We believe this is not the issue. If we want to talk about Palestine, let’s talk about the suffering of the Palestinian people and the greatness of the solidarity movements,” said Mariana Mortágua while speaking to journalists in Porto during a street campaign dedicated to the municipal elections taking place on Sunday.
The leader of the Left Bloc was asked if she had received the notification or knew the costs of the return trip to Portugal after being detained in Israel along with actress Sofia Aparício and activists Miguel Duarte and Diogo Chaves. She mentioned being more focused on the electoral campaign.
“I have been campaigning, and just as I found it difficult to read the State Budget because the Prime Minister and the Government decided to present it early to avoid the campaign being about the poorly explained business dealings of the Prime Minister, I have also struggled to check every second whether I receive notifications from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” she replied.
Mariana Mortágua reiterated her criticism of the Government, saying that the coordinator of the Left Bloc considered it “more important to inform the press about what it was going to do than to inform those directly involved about what it wanted to do and its reasons.”
The information that the activists would have to pay the repatriation costs was initially reported and confirmed by various media organizations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The four Portuguese nationals who were part of the Global Sumud flotilla landed last Sunday around 22:30 at Humberto Delgado Airport in Lisbon, where they were met by family and pro-Palestinian supporters.
Left Bloc coordinator Mariana Mortágua, actress Sofia Aparício, and activists Miguel Duarte and Diogo Chaves were detained in Israel after Israeli forces intercepted the approximately 50 boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which aimed to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
