Four GNR military personnel were sentenced to four years in prison, with a suspended sentence for crimes of kidnapping and torture to a man suspected of theft.
The facts date back to August 2019 at the GNR dos Carvalhos post in Vila Nova de Gaia. In addition to the suspended sentence, the military is prohibited from working in Guard for two years and three months.
Of the initial nine defendants, only four were considered guilty. Five were acquitted. Among the defendants was also a renovated cable, which would be involved in the case.
The court proved that the man was assaulted for about nine hours with punches, kicks, cracks, sticks and a rubber hose. It all happened in a room without windows and with the light off, which made it difficult to identify the aggressors.
The victim was unable to point to names in court, precisely for the conditions under which the attack was due. This was one of the defendants’ lines of defense, which claimed that it is not possible to make direct proof of the authorship of the acts for each of them.
The Public Prosecution Service defended the conviction of all nine accused, saying that only this way would be done justice. However, the court chose to distinguish responsibilities, and limited the condemnation of the military whose participation was demonstrated.
In reading the judgment, the judge stressed the severity of the facts and warned that crimes such as this shake citizens’ confidence in security forces.
