PJ police have announced that a record number of presumed arsonists have been remanded in custody this year ahead of their court trials.
In a universe of 88 arrests for “intentional arson”, 57 suspects have not been allowed back into their communities.
“It’s a record in our entire history”, Avelino Lima, national head of the PJ’s Permanent Forest Fire Monitoring and Support Office (GPAA), admits. So often in the past, people arrested for arson have been released, sometimes on the lightest of bail measures, to return to their homes, and very often repeat-offend.
Speaking on the sidelines of the conference “Forest Fires, Knowing to Combat” – part of the celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the Judicial Police and taking place today in Coimbra – the head of the PJ Center Directorate also stressed that data available to date demonstrates the research work that has been carried out, in collaboration with other entities, in particular with the GNR.
There has been an increase in the number of working groups under the PJ’s jurisdiction, which “helps us to produce more conclusive evidence, more demonstrative of the responsibility of the author (of the forest fires)”, he told reporters
“And the judicial authority, obviously, with more solid evidence, has no difficulty whatsoever – considering the type of crime, the type of danger posed, the damage to the community – in placing these individuals in preventive detention and a few – some – under house arrest.”
The head of the GPAA also highlighted another detail, which also constitutes a record, he said, which is the number of women arrested for the crime of forest fire (18 out of 88) – as well as a group of people “quite senior, with very advanced ages and for unequivocal intentional actions”.
Source: LUSA
