Lusa
14 Julho 2009
(Original in Portuguese)
Four cases of alleged assaults by officers of the Polícia Judiciária of prisoners came to court, but only one within the Joana case resulted in conviction.
The first trial of inspectors came in 2000 when Chief Inspector José Abrantes and three other inspectors of the PJ in Lisbon were accused of crimes offense of assault and kidnapping of a qualified man referred to as a potential informant in the process of Gang da Passarelle.
Rui Nuno Marques accused the four inspectors of the PJ (that he was) kidnapped and transported to the facilities of the Judiciária, where he said he was assaulted with the intention of revealing information for the investigation of the case.
The court found as proven assaults on the premises of the PJ without, however, has found its authorship, so José Abrantes and three other officers were acquitted.
In September 2004, after the disappearance of an eight-year-old (Joana Cipriano), the mother, Leonor Cipriano, was questioned at the premises of the PJ in Faro, where she said the inspectors tortured her to obtain a confession of the responsibility for her daughter's death, along with her brother, João Cipriano.
Five current and former PJ inspectors were brought to trial by jury, with the Ordem dos Advogados (OA) (Bar Association) acting as assistant prosecutor in the proceedings for the first time in the history of Portuguese justice .
While Faro court has given as proven torture of Leonor Cipriano, could not prove who inflicted the injuries and how, so that Leonel Marques, Paulo Pereira Cristovão and Paulo Marques Bom were acquitted.
For his part, Gonçalo Amaral was acquitted of the crime of failure to report, but the panel of judges chaired by Henrique Pavão sentenced the former PJ inspector to one year in prison suspended for the same period for the crime of false testimony.
The fifth inspector on trial, António Cardoso, was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for the same period for the crime of forgery of a document.
In 2007, an inspector of the Porto PJ, Machial Pinto, had to attend trial session, after being accused of punching, during the interrogation, a man suspected of killing the woman.
The PJ's agent has refuted the allegations and stressed in court that the suspect, assisted at the Hospital de São João Porto, where he remained for 45 minutes due to a "head injury unspecified", "shot up to an inspector," by who was forced to intervene in support of their colleague and forced to subdue him "down."
The court did not finally condemn the Porto PJ inspector.
The Ferroviário Case also refers to 2007, with three PJ inspectors to be pronounced for alleged assaults on a man suspected of theft, with the postponement of the first session in the Tribunal Criminal de Lisboa (Criminal Court of Lisbon.)
The audience, still no date set, came to be scheduled for the same time the trial started of current and former inspectors of the PJ in the media Joana Case.
Because of the trial on the torture of Leonor Cipriano who complained, mother of missing girl in the Algarve in September 2004, the Government created a manual of detention conditions in PJ, so that the rights of detainees are respected.
Contacted by Lusa news agency, António Pragal Colaç ASFIC attorney (Associação Sindical dos Funcionários de Investigação Criminal da Polícia Judiciária) (Union Association of Criminal Investigation Staff of the Judicial Police), criticized the court for judging the cases of attacks attributed to PJ inspectors.
"The courts were in Portugal to worry about chasing the thieves and not the police," he said, showing "concern" and "amazed" by the fact that investigators pursue criminal conviction for acts of violence against detainees.
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