The Advisor Judges of the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ), refused the request for habeas corpus (immediate release) presented by the two main defendants, husband and wife, of the process currently underway in the Cuban Court.
The process is related to “Operation Mirror” carried out in 21 November 2023 by the National Counter Terrorism Unit (UNCT) the Judicial Police (PJ), related to the trafficking of enslaved people in agriculture.
The lawyers for the two defendants maintained that “the period of preventive detention had expired”, which had been decreed in 24 of November two last year and that until 25 the same month of the current year, they “had no knowledge of the Public Ministry’s accusation”.
The STJ ministers refused the request, arguing that “any illegal arrest would not be potentiated”, justifying it in 21 November 2024, “indictment was filed against the defendants” who were notified three days later.
Husband and wife have already presented several appeals to the Lisbon Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court, supporting the illegality of his preventive detention, but everyone was always refused
The PJ’s UNCT “Operation Mirror” resulted in the identification of around fifty victims exploited in agricultural work, twenty-two suspects were arrested, eight of which, six men and two women, are in preventive detention.
Last day 21 November, the DIAP Public Prosecutor's Office in Évora filed an indictment, for trial in collective court, against 22 people, 17 foreign nationals and 5 Portuguese, aged and between 28 and 57 year old, imputing to each of them, the commission of human trafficking crimes, criminal association, facilitate illegal immigration, association to aid illegal immigration and money laundering.
They were also accused of the same crimes 13 commercial companies, held or managed by some of the accused.
In the accusation that Lidador Notícias (LN) We had access, the MP argues that the defendants' activity developed between 2019 and 2023 and that “they managed to make the total amount of 19.767.141,09 euros”, seized from bank accounts and cash during the operation.
Teixeira Correia
(journalist)
