REPORTED MISSING
Despite disclaimers by Spanish authorities that they know anything about it, the London Observer continues to insist that General Humberto Delgado, leader of the Portuguese Liberation Front, vanished in Spain while on-a secret mission, ‘
The Observer ran a front-page story about it February 28 and added fresh details in another account in the March 7 issue.
"Delgado entered Spain some time after February 8," declares the British weekly, "presumably in disguise and carrying one of the. six passports he used for clandestine visits to inhospitable countries. His purpose apparently was to meet leaders of the underground opposition at a remote part of the Portuguese frontier, as he had done on previous occasions,
"On February 14, a colleague in Morocco received a postcard from Delgado in Spain, saying, in coded form, 'mission accomplished,!: Nine days later word was received through underground channels that he had been arrested by the Spanish authorities in Badajoz. Both the Spanish and Portuguese Governments have since denied any knowledge of his whereabouts."
According to the Observer, Delgado's supporters suspect that the PIDE, the Portuguese secret police, have agents in Algiers who could have had Delgado trailed “up to the moment of his arrest."
A spokesman of Delgado's organization, Henrique Cerqueira, said in Rabat that Delgado may have been denounced by a rival organization. It is his belief that the General was arrested in Spain and handed over to the fascist regime in Portugal.