PJ police are investigating latest incident in trouble-torn neighbourhood of Lisbon
A 23-year-old Italian student on the Erasmus programme claims to have been raped in the early hours of Sunday morning by “two or three men” in the trouble-torn neighbourhood of Martim Moniz, in Lisbon.
PJ police are investigating, and the young woman has already undergone medical examination in São José hospital.
According to SIC, trace evidence was recovered during the examination that pointed to sexual aggression – and the young woman’s testimony “has been considered credible”.
She told police how she had just got out of a TVDE vehicle (passenger transport using digital platforms) at around 4am, and on the way to the place where she was staying she was approached by two or three men on the Escadinhas de Saúde (steps).
Later reports have all attested to these men being “foreigners” (not Portuguese).
PSP police were the first to receive her emergency call, and have since passed the case to criminal investigators.
Martim Moniz is an area of the capital that has been consistently in the news recently. It is these days strongly populated by immigrants, and has a reputation for street crimes/ drug trafficking and the open-air consumption of drugs “in full view of passers by”. In the words of SIC commentator Clara Ferreira Alves, Martim Moniz has always been an “ugly place”, and now it has become a form of ghetto, which needs to be “cleaned-up” to offer “proper conditions of habitation” – which do not exist at the moment – and in which CCTV cameras are a necessity.
After a much-criticsed police operation in the area just before Christmas, police are understood to have upped their patrols. This did not stop a violent brawl between immigrants earlier this month which saw at least three being treated in hospital for knife and other injuries.
