And he justified the release of 10 GNR soldiers and a PSP agent as he understood that “the telephone taps that were not transcribed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) cannot be used for the purposes of justifying coercive measures”.
“Of the 231 articles in which facts were attributed to the defendants, around 89 were based exclusively or partially on untranscribed wiretaps”, says the court, adding that “all the facts whose indictment was based exclusively on untranscribed wiretaps were considered not indicted as this evidence could not be valued, namely the majority of the facts attributed to the accused members of the security forces”.
In relation to the elements of the GNR and PSP, the court considered the “lack of evidence of the crimes charged and ordered them to await” the trial with TIR.
The three civilians who were subject to non-deprivation measures in this process are required to undergo periodic presentations and are prohibited from contacting the victims and co-accused, as well as from traveling abroad.
The criminal organization dismantled last week in the PJ’s “Safra Justa” operation controlled around 500 foreign workers in Alentejo, but not all of them are considered victims of trafficking, according to a police source.
On Friday, IGAI told Lusa that it proposed to the Minister of Internal Administration the opening of disciplinary proceedings against the 10 GNR soldiers and the PSP agent involved.
The 10 detained GNR soldiers belonged, at the time of the alleged crimes, to the Beja Territorial Command of the GNR, while the PSP agent, from the Beja District Police Command, had been on leave since September 2024.
As for the six civilians, the police source stated that four are Portuguese and two are foreigners, “all members of the criminal organization”.
The two foreigners, from South Asia, “acquired victims of the same origin and also ended up coercing and threatening them”.
Among the Portuguese, according to the source, there is “the leader” of the network, with the rest being “his right-hand men”.