The statements taken from the majority Portuguese speaking witnesses were essentially OK IMO, it would only be those taken from non-Portuguese speaking persons that would have issues if it ever came to a court hearing.
But you would think all statements should have been taken from the beginning to a standard that they could be used "in accordance with the relevant laws and court procedures".
They ended up with the crazy situation of one of the translators becoming an arguido.
Try looking at the English rules for witness statements, it is not so dissimilar.
Once you have grasped how the process works you will begin to understand how irrelevant some of this argument has become.
When you can produce a witness statement as evidence in courtTo be admissible in court, evidence must be relevant to a fact which has to be proved, or disproved.
Nothing proves itself, and every fact, and document relied upon in court must be proved by admissible evidence.
When you cannot produce a witness statement as evidenceA written witness statement is not admissible on its own as evidence at trial if the defence do not agree with the evidence that has been written within it.
How the statement is used in courtThe statement will be read out at the hearing, only if it has been agreed by both the
prosecution and defence. This allows for evidence to be given without having to call
the witness to attend. If there is no agreement, the statement will not be read out in court.
A witness may refer to specific documents in a statement and these documents or items of evidence will be ‘produced’ as exhibits in the case. Any document or object referred to as anexhibit and identified in the statement will be treated as if it has been produced by the person who made the statement.
For what happens in Portugal see CCP 78/87 Articles 128 onwards.