The former prime minister and main defendant in the Operation Marquês case, José Sócrates, sent a request to the court hearing the Marquês case asking for an end to “the regrettable and degrading spectacle” of being defended by a lawyer he did not hire.
The spectacle “of seeing someone on television who claims to be my lawyer, without me having ever given him any mandate”, he wrote. “It is a situation that I am very unhappy with and which, I insist, must cease immediately — if I have twenty days to choose a new lawyer, please spare me the painful scenario of seeing someone speak on my behalf against my will, giving public expression to the continued caricature of abuses in which this process has become fertile”, added the former prime minister.
This request follows Pedro Delille’s resignation from defending José Sócrates in this process for “deontological reasons”. “Continuing in this trial is an unbearable violation of my conscience and the ethics that I impose on myself, of my independence, integrity and professional and personal dignity – I repudiate and refuse to participate and validate, for one more minute, in this simulacrum of a trial, in this ‘play trial'”, claimed the lawyer.
The court called an unofficial lawyer to defend José Sócrates, and then refused a 48-hour postponement for him to learn about the case.