Jaquelina Mendes asked for the acquittal of 20 defendants accused of human trafficking and dismissed the deadline to appeal the court decision. Attorney General Amadeu Guerra wanted to appeal and decided to establish a “procedure of a disciplinary nature” aiming at the prosecutor of the MP de Beja.
The Attorney General's Office decided to establish a “disciplinary procedure” against Jaquelina Mendes, Magistrate of the Public Prosecution Service of Beja. This information is confirmed by Amadeu Guerra's office and is related to one of the largest cases of human trafficking that has already been investigated in Portugal and which ended a resounding defeat for the MP in court.
The case burst in November 2022 When the Judicial Police launched an operation that led to the detention of dozens of suspects of human trafficking. The net, allegedly, exploited foreign workers who were distributed by agricultural explorations in Alentejo where they worked unable and were coerced to pay a part of what they earned to the suspects.
The process began to fall into the instruction phase of 41 accused by the Ministry, only 18 were at trial and they all ended up being acquitted.
According to the Court of Beja what was proved in trial was the violation of work rules by the defendants, as the fact that they did not have paid the amounts previously agreed to immigrant workers. However, stressed the judge, cited by Lusa, "The rest was proved", in other words, that the defendants raised, deceived or mistreated workers. That is why, were acquitted of criminal association crimes, human trafficking and money laundering.
The accusation is from Attorney Felismina Carvalho Franco, But who represented the MP in the trial was Jaquelina Mendes. This attorney not only requested the acquittal of the defendants, as it dispensed with the deadline to appeal the decision of the Court.
Ignoring this fact, The Attorney General of the Republic made an order in which he was appointed to the case Felismama Carvalho Franco, a prosecutor with “high degree of specialization and experience” in the type of crime investigated in the process, and with “deep knowledge of the facts, of the proof collected and the legal issues that are in the same, which makes it particularly able to analyze the grounds in the judgment that decided to acquit the defendants ”.
The idea was to study a possible resource. But as Jaquelina Mendes dismissed the deadline to appeal, The order became useless. This prosecutor now faces a possible disciplinary process because he will not have informed the hierarchy of the decision to dispense with the deadline to appeal.
With this decision by Jaquelina Mendes, The case has been res judicata and is no longer subject to appeal. Contacted by Expresso, I did not want to provide any clarification.
There is another process related to this case and aimed at the defendants who were arrested but were not arrested preventively. The MP appealed to the instructional decision that cleared much of the crimes and Évora's relationship has not yet decided whether the prosecutor Felismina is right.
Source: Express
