Cabo Verde: Investigate How Parliament Lifted Amadeu Oliveira's Immunity
The Issue
We are asking Cabo Verde's Prime Minister, Francisco Carvalho, to have Parliament examine how it lifted the parliamentary immunity of Amadeu Oliveira, a lawyer who won a seat in 2021 and has been in prison since 18 July 2021.
He took his seat in the National Assembly on 18 May 2021. Two months later he was arrested. He is still in prison in São Vicente. His arrest and his trial both rested on parliamentary resolutions.
What the official gazette shows
- Resolution 03/X/2021, adopted on 12 July 2021 by Parliament's Permanent Commission, authorized his arrest so he could be brought before a judge. He was arrested on 18 July. The resolution was published in the official gazette on 19 July, one day later.
- Resolutions 66, 67 and 68/X/2022, adopted on 28 July 2022 and published on 3 August 2022, suspended his mandate so that three separate criminal cases could go to trial.
Only one of those trials has ever taken place. Under Resolution 67/X/2022 he was tried, sentenced to seven years in prison, and stripped of his seat. The trials in Praia and Porto Novo, cleared by Resolutions 66 and 68, have never been held.
The petitioners maintain that these resolutions were adopted outside the procedures required by the Constitution, the Statute of Deputies and Parliament's own Rules of Procedure, and that their effect was to keep an elected deputy out of Parliament for nearly the whole of the last legislature.
What we are asking
We call on Prime Minister Francisco Carvalho to do one of two things the law allows:
- Ask the National Assembly to set up a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Resolutions 03/X/2021 and 67/X/2022, or
- Refer this request to a parliamentary group, so that 15 deputies can require the inquiry. Under the law on parliamentary inquiries, a request from 15 deputies must be granted.
The request covers only these two resolutions. The other two concern criminal cases that are still formally open, and the law does not allow an inquiry into open criminal cases.
What the inquiry would and would not do
It would examine Parliament's own procedures: who asked for these resolutions, how they were voted and published, and how far they were taken to reach. It would not reopen the court case. Its conclusions would bind no court and change no judicial decision.
In August 2026, the President of the Republic asked the Constitutional Court whether Resolution 03/X/2021, which allowed Amadeu Oliveira's arrest, also allowed his preventive detention. Parliament can ask itself the same kind of question.
This petition supports a formal petition to the Prime Minister from Cape Verdeans living abroad, under Article 59 of the Constitution. The full record is at https://www.amadeu.cv.
A Parliament that examines its own decisions is a stronger Parliament. Sign, then send this to five people.
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The Issue
We are asking Cabo Verde's Prime Minister, Francisco Carvalho, to have Parliament examine how it lifted the parliamentary immunity of Amadeu Oliveira, a lawyer who won a seat in 2021 and has been in prison since 18 July 2021.
He took his seat in the National Assembly on 18 May 2021. Two months later he was arrested. He is still in prison in São Vicente. His arrest and his trial both rested on parliamentary resolutions.
What the official gazette shows
- Resolution 03/X/2021, adopted on 12 July 2021 by Parliament's Permanent Commission, authorized his arrest so he could be brought before a judge. He was arrested on 18 July. The resolution was published in the official gazette on 19 July, one day later.
- Resolutions 66, 67 and 68/X/2022, adopted on 28 July 2022 and published on 3 August 2022, suspended his mandate so that three separate criminal cases could go to trial.
Only one of those trials has ever taken place. Under Resolution 67/X/2022 he was tried, sentenced to seven years in prison, and stripped of his seat. The trials in Praia and Porto Novo, cleared by Resolutions 66 and 68, have never been held.
The petitioners maintain that these resolutions were adopted outside the procedures required by the Constitution, the Statute of Deputies and Parliament's own Rules of Procedure, and that their effect was to keep an elected deputy out of Parliament for nearly the whole of the last legislature.
What we are asking
We call on Prime Minister Francisco Carvalho to do one of two things the law allows:
- Ask the National Assembly to set up a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Resolutions 03/X/2021 and 67/X/2022, or
- Refer this request to a parliamentary group, so that 15 deputies can require the inquiry. Under the law on parliamentary inquiries, a request from 15 deputies must be granted.
The request covers only these two resolutions. The other two concern criminal cases that are still formally open, and the law does not allow an inquiry into open criminal cases.
What the inquiry would and would not do
It would examine Parliament's own procedures: who asked for these resolutions, how they were voted and published, and how far they were taken to reach. It would not reopen the court case. Its conclusions would bind no court and change no judicial decision.
In August 2026, the President of the Republic asked the Constitutional Court whether Resolution 03/X/2021, which allowed Amadeu Oliveira's arrest, also allowed his preventive detention. Parliament can ask itself the same kind of question.
This petition supports a formal petition to the Prime Minister from Cape Verdeans living abroad, under Article 59 of the Constitution. The full record is at https://www.amadeu.cv.
A Parliament that examines its own decisions is a stronger Parliament. Sign, then send this to five people.
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Petition created on August 15, 2026