Career
Like his father he was also a Civil Engineer by training from the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon.
After the Carnation Revolution, he founded, together with Diogo Freitas do Amaral, the Democratic and Social Centre (CDS), in which he became Deputy to the Assembly of the Republic and Minister.
After the victory of the Democratic Alliance, a coalition between the Social Democrats, the Popular Monarchists and his own party, in the Portuguese legislative election, 1980, he became the first civilian Defence Minister since the Carnation Revolution in 3 January 1980.
He died in a plane crash, together with his wife Maria Manuel Simões Vaz da Silva Pires, the Prime Minister Francisco de Sá Carneiro and Sá Carneiro's partner, Snu Abecassis, while heading to Porto to take part in a rally for the Portuguese presidential election, 1981.
Conspiracy theorists claim he was the true target for assassination, for he had documents concerning the October surprise conspiracy theory and was planning on taking them to the United Nations's General Assembly. According to this conspiracy theory, Reagan promised to sell American weapons to Iran, to replace the old Portuguese ones; the Portuguese military were acting as middlemen (two of the Portuguese Presidential candidates, in 1980, were Generals, and one of them was promptly accused as responsible for the assassination by many Sá Carneiro supporters); a boat with the weapons was almost seized at Lisbon's harbor. This theory is reinforced with the fact that Amaro da Costa was the one renting the plane, and Sá Carneiro a last minute passenger (possibly as a decoy).
Read more about this topic: Adelino Amaro Da Costa
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