According to a report by CNN Portugal, the Public Ministry will appeal the court decision that lifts the measures against Mário Machado so that he can go to Ukraine to fight.

Expresso newspaper stated on Friday that Mário Machado is no longer obliged to comply with fortnightly presentations at a police station, the decision having been taken following a request made by his lawyer, so that he can move to Ukraine. According to the court decision, a judge of the Central Criminal Investigation Court (TCIC) considered that “in view of the humanitarian situation experienced in Ukraine and the purposes invoked by the accused for his claim, the accused may fail to comply with the aforementioned measure while he is absent abroad”.

Earlier this month, Mário Machado announced on his Telegram account that he would travel to Ukraine, along with 20 other people, in what he called “Operation Ukraine1143”. On 18 March, Mário Machado's lawyer told Público that his client would leave for Ukraine later that day.

Far right organisations

Mário Machado has been linked to several far-right organizations, such as the National Action Movement, the Aryan Brotherhood and Portugal Hammerskins, the Portuguese branch of the Hammerskin Nation, one of the main neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in the United States of America. He also founded the Frente Nacional and Nova Ordem Social movements, which he led from 2014 to 2019.

Machado has a criminal record including several convictions, including the sentence, in 1997, to four years and three months in prison for his involvement in the death, of Alcindo Monteiro on the night of June 10, 1995.

He also has another 10-year sentence, fixed in 2012 by legal overlapping following convictions to effective imprisonment in three cases, which included crimes of racial discrimination, offense to qualified physical integrity, defamation, threat and coercion of a prosecutor and possession of a firearm.