"Those who accuse a citizen must be able to give a detailed account, in terms of circumstances, time, place and manner, of the practice of one or more crimes," said Augusto Ínsua Pereira, lawyer for Thai defendant Sangam Sawaiprakhon, to who the prosecution of the MP "is weak (...), is nothing".

Thai Sangam and Pakistani Waseem Haider were acquitted on 6 February in the court of Matosinhos, for lack of evidence, of the charge of killing and dismembering in 2019 the Thai woman Natchaya Saranyaphat, whose head was found in a bag on a beach in that district.

They were accused of co-authoring one crime of murder and another of desecrating a corpse.

In reading the judgment, the president of the collective of judges of Matosinhos, Susana Pinto, stressed that the evidence produced in the hearing "does not allow" to support the thesis that the two defendants were the authors of the crimes in question.

"It was not possible to ascertain who, how and under what circumstances the facts happened", he stressed.

The perpetrators of the crimes, whoever they may be, "unfortunately will remain unpunished," lamented the judge.

In view of this decision, the accused, who were in preventive detention, were immediately released.

The victim's head was found at about 10am on 7 March, 2019 on the sandy beach of Leça da Palmeira, according to reports made at the time by a source from the local volunteer firefighters.

About a month later, on 5 April, the Judicial Police (PJ) detained, as the alleged perpetrator of the crime, the 52-year-old masseuse and a Thai national. On 15 August of that year, the PJ announced the arrest of a suspect of the material authorship of the qualified homicide and the desecration of a corpse.