Portugal: Government cancels police force training in Israel over human rights concerns

This is how Israel a trusted partner is ditched by the Portuguese government, at a time when Europe is facing all sorts of security threats, terrorism, transnational organised crime etc.  About 50,000 Muslims live in Portugal and the numbers keep growing whereas approximately 600 Jews (the lowest number in Europe).  Israel is constantly criticised in Portugal but Arab countries are viewed favourably.

From the Daily Mail on Line Wires:

Government cedes to pressure from Communists, cancels police force training in Israel over human rights concerns (Diario de Noticias)

From Diário de Notícias (Google translation):

The Ministry of Justice (MJ) ordered the Judicial Police (PJ) to suspend participation in the European project to train inspectors in interrogation techniques of transnational organized crime suspects. This decision came following several protests by leftist parties and organizations, mainly the Portuguese Communist Party, because the technical coordination was from Israel, whose security forces "violate human rights."

The Ministry of Justice refutes any "political motivation" in the decision. Both in the PJ, as in other forces and security services, the news, published by Jornal de Negócios, caused high concern, due to the fact that Israel has been for many years a training partner at different levels of the Portuguese police and even the secret police, as well as a supplier of almost all the telephone surveillance and interceptions technology used by the PJ.

read more (in Portuguese) 

More on the century-old antagonism against Jews and now against Israel: Portugal, the Jews and Israel - a difficult relationship.