A Portuguese commission set up to evaluate the possibility of posthumous reintegration of Barros Basto says that he must make the request himself. He was born in 1887 and died in 1961.

“It is incredible, but the State is now claiming that my grandfather needs to be alive —age 136— and can only receive the posthumous reinstatement if he requests it personally,” as was said yesterday by Isabel Barros Lopes, Barros Basto’s granddaughter and Vice President of the Oporto Community, to the Jewish News Syndicate.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, a 113-year-old man is now the oldest man in the world. His name is Juan Vincente Pérez and he was born in Venezuela.

On September 7, 2018, João Vasconcelos, a deputy of the Bloco de Esquerda party, wrote to Isabel Barros Lopes, noting that through his party’s legislative initiative, a law had been published with a view to the reintegration in life or posthumously of military personnel in the Armed Forces who had been persecuted and unfairly separated from the military institution. "I was keenly interested in his grandfather's process, as soon as I became aware of the so-called "Portuguese Dreyfus" case and which deserves all fair reinstatement, albeit posthumously", wrote the distinguished deputy at the time. “The Bloco de Esquerda Parliamentary Group has been fighting for the reintegration of soldiers unfairly separated from the military institution for a long time. We think that Captain Barros Basto's process could fit into this new legislative initiative", he added.

Responding to the message of Vasconcelos, Barros Lopes wrote that "my mother and grandmother always demanded recognition by the Portuguese State that the 1937 conviction was anti-Semitic and the reintegration of my grandfather into the category he would have reached if he had not been convicted. That recognition by the State was made in 2012, and in addition the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces recognized in 2013 that my grandfather could have reached the rank of colonel on November 2, 1945. However, the reintegration has been successively postponed."

Isabel filed a new request under the Bloco de Esquerda 2018 law permitting the reinstatement of deceased military personnel. The response it received was astonishing. A special commission composed of representatives from the social security system and various military branches said Barros Basto should make the request in person.

“The motive is ill will against the Jewish Community of Oporto,” community president Gabriel Senderowicz told the Jewish News Syndicate, noting that hundreds of people have been posthumously reinstated in Portugal. “The Oporto community has always been the target of some of Lisbon’s mediocre elites, who have used slanderous anonymous denunciations by the scum of society. They did it with Barros Basto in the 1930s, they did it with us in 2022,” he said.

The Community has officially responded to the commission's refusal and has already promised to proceed to the courts in case of a new refusal, even going to the European Court of Human Rights.