Five suspects have been arrested over the death of a Cape Verdean student, Portuguese police said Friday after an outcry by an anti-racism group and diaspora from the West African archipelago brought attention to the case. The student spent 10 days in a coma before dying in a hospital in the northern city of Porto on December 31. Rodrigues’s family condemned police inaction following the initial assault, and Cape Verde’s government even stepped in to urge Portugal — the former colonial ruler of the tiny island nation — to investigate quickly. The victim’s father, Joaquim Rodrigues, has criticised the fact that the judicial police did not take over the investigation until after his son’s death. At the start of January, Cape Verde’s Foreign Minister Luis Filipe Tavares asked Portugal to “swiftly” solve the crime.

Source: Punch January 17, 2020 16:30 UTC