Colonial General Arriaga dies

2004-02-04 11:32

Lisbon - General Kaulza de Arriaga, a prominent Portuguese military leader who helped put down rebellions in the country's then colony of Mozambique in the 1960s, has died aged 89, the Lusa news agency said Tuesday, quoting family members.

Arriaga, who served under the dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, was notably accused of commanding a massacre which left hundreds of dead in the Mozambican village of Wiryiamu on December 16, 1972, a charge he always denied.

As head of ground forces in Mozambique from 1969 to 1970, and then overall head of Portugal's armed forces from 1970 to 1973, he also oversaw an offensive which ran from July to early August 1970 in the Cape Delgado region in the north of Mozambique.

The offensive was one of the bloodiest episodes of the colonial wars of the 1960s, which were to lead to the independence of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau in 1974-75, along with the collapse of the dictatorship in Lisbon.

Arriaga, who held top posts in both the nuclear power industry and a major oil company in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was an unrepentant defender of the dictatorship against the revolution which overthrew it in April 1974.

He described the end of the regime, which ushered in democracy, as the "biggest disaster in Portuguese history".

Family members said Arriaga died overnight on Monday after a long illness.

- AFP