José Lamego
Biography
José Alberto Rebelo dos Reis Lamego was born in Coimbra on January 5, 1953. His first steps in the political struggle against the dictatorship were taken at Pedro Nunes High School in Lisbon, particularly within the Lisbon Secondary Student Association Movement (MAESL) and the Democratic Electoral Commission (CDE), in an environment marked by the 1969 elections and the radicalization of the student movement. His political activity intensified at the Lisbon Faculty of Law, where he joined the board of the Student Association, especially after being recruited into the Reorganizational Movement of the Proletarian Party (MRPP) in early 1972.
On October 12, 1972, José Lamego was one of the many students who participated in the meeting against repression and imperialism at the Higher Institute of Economic and Financial Sciences (ISCEF), where student José António Ribeiro Santos was murdered by the PIDE/DGS. The students detect a suspicious individual on the premises and mistake him for an agent from the Directorate-General for Security (DGS), although he was actually from the Public Security Police. Members of the Student Association leadership request that DGS officials go to ISCEF to identify the alleged political police officer, who had since been hooded and taken to the amphitheater where the meeting was to take place. The DGS officers’ entry into the amphitheater provokes a hostile reaction from the students. One of the officers shoots at close range, hitting Ribeiro Santos in the back. Continuing to shoot, he is handcuffed by José Lamego, who, in a hand-to-hand struggle, prevents a more serious tragedy and is shot in the leg. Ribeiro Santos’ death will be a defining moment in the radicalization not only of the student movement, but of the opposition itself and even of sectors that were not particularly radicalized.
After receiving hospital treatment, José Lamego, whom the MRPP had claimed as a party member, was taken to the São João de Deus Prison-Hospital in Caxias and later to the Southern stronghold. Released on January 9, 1973, he was arrested again on May 3 at the University Campus in Lisbon. He was taken to the Caxias Prison, where he was subjected to sleep torture for seven days, and then another six, for a total of 13 days. He also spent seven painful days in an underground cell, designated “secret,” during which he went on a hunger strike. He was released in July 1973 and returned to Coimbra, where he was arrested for the third time on February 15, 1974, during a street action in which he painted walls to call for a demonstration, before returning to Caxias. This would be his most brutal period of imprisonment. He was brutally beaten by a group of six DGS officers, believed to have been drugged, and again subjected to sleep torture for 16 days, followed by another two-day period and another three-day period, suffering severe hallucinations.
Released at the age of 21 on April 26, 1974, José Lamego had suffered a total of 34 days of sleep deprivation and, except for a brief period during his second arrest, was always in solitary confinement and never tried.
