On Thursday, Portuguese police briefly detained a man at the headquarters of the national conservative political party Chega after he had entered the building and threatened to blow it up.
Reuters reports that the man was sent for a psychiatric evaluation after authorities found no explosive device with him, a police official told the news outlet.
Police were responding to a call from people inside the party’s offices that a man had sneaked into the Chega headquarters in Lisbon with an explosive device in his backpack.
“We intercepted the man, who is 59 … called in the explosives deactivation team and the dog team, who found no explosives and the individual was taken to a hospital. He was speaking incoherently,” the police spokesperson said.
In elections last March, the party rose to be the third-largest force in the Portuguese parliament after quadrupling its representation in the chamber.
Party president Andre Ventura was out of the building on the campaign trail for the upcoming EU election at the time of the incident, but told reporters he had been informed that the man had wanted to kill him.
“It’s regrettable that this escalation of violence can continue. We’re going to re-evaluate the security that we have at the headquarters,” Ventura said.
Chega party spokesperson attributed the incident to “the result of the climate of hate and cancel culture created by the far-left.”
This latest threat of violence comes on the heels of the shooting of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico last week.
