The General Inspectorate of Internal Administration (IGAI) will propose to the Minister of Internal Administration the opening of disciplinary proceedings against ten GNR soldiers and one PSP agent detained by suspected exploitation of immigrants in Alentejoinformed the organization.
“The opening of disciplinary proceedings will be proposed to the Minister of Internal Administration [Maria Lúcia Amaral]who, by law, has the authority to do so”, said an IGAI source this Friday, in response to Lusa.
The same source added that the General Inspectorate is awaiting the “order for the application of coercive measures” to have “a rigorous notion of the factuality” attributed to each of the ten GNR soldiers and one member of the PSP detained in the “Safra Justa” operation.
The communication of Coercive measures are scheduled for 6pm on Saturdaya source at the Central Criminal Instruction Court, in Lisbon, confirmed this Friday to Lusa, where the 17 people arrested on Tuesday were interrogated by an investigating judge.
According to information provided this morning at the courthouse door by lawyer Frederico Miguel Alves, who represents two defendants, ten of the 17 detainees were released after being interviewed on Thursday, one GNR, one PSP and five civilians remained in detention, for whom the Public Ministry (MP) requested preventive detention.
The ten people released, as the Public Ministry requested coercive measures that did not deprive their liberty, are nine GNR soldiers and one civilian.
According to a police source, the criminal organization dismantled in Tuesday’s operation by the Judiciary Police (PJ) controlled around 500 foreign workers, but not all of them are considered victims of trafficking.
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, it was revealed on Tuesday. As for the six civilians, the police source told Lusa that four are Portuguese and two are foreigners, “all members of the criminal organization”.
“The two foreigners are Indians and recruited victims of the same origin and also ended up coercing and threatening them”, said the same source. Among the Portuguese, he continued, is “the leader” of the network, who was “detained on the public road in Beja, at 5 am on Tuesday”, while the rest were “his right-hand men”.
The MP considers that elements of the security forces controlled and monitored foreign workers “in exchange for economic compensation” and even threatened them, “giving them the understanding that complaining to the authorities would not be a viable alternative to react to the abuses they were subjected to”.
The facts investigated, according to the PJ and the MP, are likely to involve the practice of crimes of aiding illegal immigration, human trafficking, active and passive corruption, abuse of power, forgery, tax fraud and money laundering.