The Portuguese flag has been permanently removed from a ship carrying explosives destined for Israel, among other countries, after the necessary technical steps were taken, an official at the Portuguese Foreign Ministry told Lusa.
“The technical steps have been completed, and the flag has been removed,” said the source, adding that “the registration has been definitively cancelled”.
On 30 September, an official source had told Lusa that the ‘Kathrin’ had asked for the Portuguese flag to be withdrawn, in an “irreversible” decision, after the Portuguese government had made representations to its owner about its cargo.
The German-owned ship, which was registered in Madeira until Tuesday of this week, was carrying explosives destined for arms manufacturers in Israel, Poland and Slovakia.
The opposition Left Bloc (BE) had asked the Public Prosecutor’s Office to “monitor and prevent Portugal from being accused internationally of complicity in genocide” and proposed that the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs in the centre-right coalition government, Paulo Rangel, appear before the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee to testify on the case.
In September, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, called on the Portuguese government to “urgently” request the removal of the Portuguese flag from the ‘Kathrin’.
“After recognising the plausibility of genocide in Gaza in January 2024, the ICJ [International Court of Justice] made it clear that all states have an obligation to ‘respect and enforce’ the Genocide Convention ‘in all circumstances’, and that states have ‘international obligations regarding the transfer of arms to parties to an armed conflict’,” Albanese said at the time.
(Joana Haderer – edited by Pedro Sousa Carvalho | Lusa.pt)
Source: euractiv.com
