Law enforcement officers arrested further a 15 police officers on Tuesday as part of an ongoing probe into the rape and torture of vulnerable people, bringing the total number of those charged or arrested to 25.
A further 15 police officers, suspected of torturing and mistreating vulnerable people, were arrested in Portugal on Tuesday as part of a wide-ranging probe into abuses of power in the Iberian country. Investigators conducted about 30 searches, including at two police stations in Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, believed to be the site of the abuses.
The victims were mainly illegal immigrants, homeless people or drug users, as said by the Portuguese press. Based on the indictment, the officers deliberately targeted the most vulnerable people.
The police confirmed the arrests, one of whom was a civilian, but did not say whether those arrested were suspected of having committed torture themselves or of failing to report abuse they had witnessed in person or in published videos. Prosecutors said the abuse had been reported by the police as well as by some of the victims, but they cited only a few such accounts, stating that most of the officers who allegedly knew about the torture had remained silent.
In January, prosecutors charged two officers with torturing vagrants and migrants, and then sharing images of their actions in an online chat with dozens of other officers, which triggered a wider investigation. A further seven people were arrested in March. According to the indictment, they are awaiting trial, charged with torture, acts of cruelty and abuse of power. One is also charged with rape, robbery and forgery.
The newspaper Correio da Manhã reported that the investigation is set to involve some 70 officers from various police stations, including some of them in senior ranks.
The PSP’s Lisbon headquarters has stressed that it categorically rejects any behaviour that constitutes a flagrant violation of these principles, and emphasised that the institution itself had reported the facts to the public prosecutor’s office. Police director LuÃs Carrilho stated: “We enforce a zero-tolerance policy toward cases of misconduct. Citizens can continue to have confidence in the police.”
Human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have long expressed concern about police brutality in Portugal. Though it welcomed the probe, Amnesty said that the sharing of images and messages about their actions in chat groups and on social media in this specific case demonstrated a “huge sense of impunity” among officers.
