The Central Court of Criminal Investigation today sent to trial the two PSP agents – one of them a native of Porto Santo – accused in January by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of crimes of torture and sexual abuse against detainees at the Rato police station, in Lisbon.
In reading the instructive decision, the judge considered that the prosecution had sufficient evidence that the police officers committed the crimes of which they are accused by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and that there is a “serious probability” that they will be convicted at the end of the trial.
The main defendant, 22 years old and in pre-trial detention since he was arrested in July 2025, is responsible for 29 crimes: six of torture, five of rape – four attempted and one consummated -, seven of abuse of power, three of offences to qualified physical integrity, two of document forgery, one of aggravated theft, one of violation of correspondence, two of robbery and two of possession of a prohibited weapon.
The other police officer, 26 years old and born in Porto Santo, also arrested in July 2025, is accused of seven crimes – two of torture, three of abuse of power, one of offense to physical integrity, and another of possession of a prohibited weapon – and is currently under house arrest.
According to the indictment of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP), between July 2024 and March 2025, the two officers of the Rato police station, in the centre of Lisbon, allegedly assaulted, sexually abused men, punched, slapped, and headbutted detainees, videoing and photographing many of the incidents.
The victims were mainly drug addicts, people who committed petty crimes, many of them foreigners and irregular in Portugal, or homeless, says the MP.
Some of the images of the abuses, he adds, were shared in WhatsApp groups with dozens of other PSP agents.
As requests for an investigation opened, the two police officers have claimed there is a lack of evidence to connect them with the crimes. This was overturned by the investigating judge, who said:
“All the evidence that was collected during the investigation phase is vast, it is diverse, but it is consistent with each other.”
The judge considered that, although the defendants have questioned the credibility of the victims, because “in their view, they are marginal people,” the victims have reported what happened accurately. Furthermore, there is video and forensic evidence to support their statements.
“Only in the trial phase, through the adversarial and immediacy, will this trial court be able to assess the strength” of the testimonies of the defendants and witnesses, he concluded.
In March 2026, seven other PSP agents were arrested and remanded in custody for similar crimes, as part of a second investigation into situations of torture, abuse of power, and rape at the Rato police station.
The case, denounced by the PSP, gave rise to nine disciplinary proceedings and an inquiry process, the latter on who watched the videos, said the iInspector General of Internal Administration, Pedro Figueiredo, at the time.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
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