A white man who shot dead a black actor in Portugal last year has been sentenced to more than two decades in prison.
Bruno Candé, 39, was shot several times by Evaristo Marinho, 77, after being threatened days earlier.
Marinho was convicted of racially motivated murder and handed 22 years and nine months behind bars.
The killing sparked anti-racism demonstrations to demand justice for Mr Candé, who was of Guinean origin.
He was a father of three, and a member of the Casa Conveniente theatre group.
Evaristo Marinho, a retired nursing assistant, served in the military during the colonial war against African independence in the former Portuguese colony of Angola.
Days before the shooting, the court heard that he racially abused Mr Candé while the actor walked his dog, telling him, among other things, to “go back to your country”.
Marinho returned to the same street where that altercation occurred several times to find Mr Candé, local media reports, and fatally shot him on 25 July, 2020.
“Bruno Candé lost his life and left his family and friends,” the Portuguese legislator Joacine Katar Moreira wrote on Twitter, who herself has received racially motivated death threats.
“This murder hit us all – 22 years is the minimum to alleviate the pain and anger we feel.”
Mr Candé’s niece, Andreia Araújo, told Portuguese daily Jornal de Notícias that she hopes the decision will “serve as an example for the whole world.”
Complaints of racial discrimination in Portugal rose 50% to 655 last year, however many incidents are not reported, and the real figure is thought to be far higher, Portugal’s Secretary of State for Equality Rosa Monteiro said in March.
In 2019, eight Portuguese police officers were found guilty of kidnapping and beating up six black youths in a neighbourhood four years earlier. (BBC)
