Two Public Security Police (PSP) agents who worked at the Rato police station in central Lisbon are currently in pre-trial detention, facing charges of torture, rape and assault, primarily targeting drug addicts, homeless people, and foreigners.
According to SIC Notícias, which has had access to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) indictment, the two police officers, aged 21 and 24, were arrested last year, following searches of their homes and police stations in Bairro Alto and Rato, in Lisbon.
It was their own PSP hierarchy that reported the facts under investigation.
The defendants are accused of crimes including torture, abuse of power, rape, and assault, among others.
The indictment states that the young officers assaulted people they had detained with “punches, slaps, and blows to the head with their gun butts, even filming and photographing some of these situations and the respective victims.”
The Public Prosecutor’s Office states in the indictment that the agents targeted drug addicts, people who had committed petty crimes – many of whom were foreign nationals and undocumented, and/ or homeless.
One of the reported cases is that of a Moroccan citizen who was allegedly sodomised with a police truncheon, beaten, then taken away in a patrol car and abandoned in the street.
“The use of a baton for sodomisation is reported in another situation, where a broom handle was also used. Everything was filmed and often shared in WhatsApp groups with dozens of other police officers,” said SIC.
Another reported case is that of a foreign man who was detained in Cais do Sodré, Lisbon, for possession of a weapon.
The prosecution alleges the man had a gun pointed at his head and was subjected to “slaps to the face, punches to the head, and blows to the body” by the two policemen. According to the prosecution, using the knife that had been seized, one of the police officers “cut some of his dreadlocks and threw them into a trash can” – while the other officer filmed everything with his cell phone, “appearing to enjoy the situation”.
Jornal de Notícias today gives another example in which the two men allegedly “simulated the crucifixion of a woman” at the Rato station after having “pulled her off the chair” on which she was seated on the esplanada of a bar that was trying to close, handcuffed her and “thrown her into the back of a police car”.
The crucifixion simulation appears to have resulted from the woman’s ‘insulting’ of the two police officers back at Rato station.
Correio da Manhã also cites a passage from the accusation, formulated by DIAP (the department of investigation and penal action), claiming that the two agents – named as Óscar Borges and Guilhereme Leme – “chose their victims among the most most fragilised for their degraded human condition” to “practice actions in a violent, perverse, uncontrolled/ unbalanced fashion, showing real signs of wickedness”.
Sources: LUSA/ Jornal de Notícias/ Correio da Manhã
