Portugal: ‘Portuguese Alfred Dreyfus’ first persecuted, now discriminated

Via Times of Israel:

The Jewish Community of Porto in northern Portugal quashed a bill designed to reinstate an army captain who had been fired and libeled because of his outreach to descendants of Jews.

The lawmakers who submitted the bill to rehabilitate Arthur Carlos Barros Basto withdrew it earlier this month ahead of a vote at the National Assembly after the Jewish community complained that it was discriminatory.

The bill failed to bring closure to Barro Basto’s case, the community and some of his descendants argued, because it offered none of the financial compensation given to non-Jewish officers who had been reinstated following persecution by the pro-fascist dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.

“Contrary to the general law of the land, applicable to all cases of reinstatement,” the community wrote recently to parliament members, ”this special law deplorably and scandalously excludes a Jew and his family.”  more