A Kurdish kebab-shop owner was forced to “fight for his life” when a crazed mob came out of a discotheque in Lisbon’s Cais de Sodré on Bank Holiday Monday.
Police were nowhere to be seen as around 50 youths poured into Mustafa Kartal’s eaterie, one even firing a shot that skimmed past the terrified man’s head.
Kartal defended himself with a meat cleaver. The mob fled as police arrived though six were later identified through their arrival at local hospitals.
The tragedy of this story, explain reports, is that urban city areas have ‘concentrations of poor unemployed youths’ for whom crime is the only way of life.
Serious incidents – like the shooting back in February of a father of two as he drove his daughter to a birthday party (click here) – remain ‘unsolved’ as ‘no-go’ ghettos hide perpetrators.
In this case, Mustafa Kartal – a Kurd with Turkish nationality whose business had been open only one month – has vowed to keep going, although he says he is afraid for his safety and that of his one Indian member of staff.
The PSP is reported to be “aware of the possibility of reprisals” and “establishing special measures to guarantee the safety of both Kartal and his “Palácio do Kebab”, but the truth is that the violence that played out was “stopped by no-one”, Kartal told reporters, as passers-by were too afraid to get involved.
