When caught, the young man proposed an agreement to the Civil Police. However, he ended up not complying with what had been defined, which led to his arrest and preventive detention.
A 23-year-old young man, born in Almada, was accused by the Public Ministry of crimes of espionage, theft and other offensesafter an operation that involved the National Counterterrorism Unit of the Judiciary Police (PJ) and culminated in his arrest at the Russian Embassy in Lisbon. Miguel Rodrigues is in preventive detention in the high security prison of Monsanto Prison, in isolation.
The investigation began after the young man infiltrated a hotel in Lisbon where NATO officials were staying, during a conference held in February 2025. After booking a room in the same hotel with different identities, he studied routines and managed to stealing a master card from an employee. He gained the trust of military personnel, even sharing meals and leisure time, before stealing a NATO-owned computer and a Swedish Navy iPad from an officer’s room.
The day after the theft, he went to a computer store to try to decrypt the content of equipment. Upon returning to the hotel, he was intercepted by the GNR, at a time when the case had already been taken over by the PJ because the victim was a NATO employee.
Convinced that he held classified information of high value, first tried to contact the Russian Embassypresenting himself as a spy. After being unsuccessful, he sought out the PJ, accompanied by a lawyer, offering to collaborate as an undercover agent, says the .
The authorities accepted and a scheme started on February 7 was set up, with the aim of getting him to hand over equipment similar to that stolen to the alleged Russian contact, allowing his arrest in the act. However, the suspect did not fulfill the agreement and, instead of following the agreed route, he left a TVDE, got on the Metro and went to Alameda station, where he picked up material from a computer store.
Under surveillance by the PJ and the Information and Security Service (SIS), he was photographed handing over a “pen drive” to a Russian diplomat with diplomatic registration, identified in the indictment as Aleksandr Martianov. The contents of the device remain unknown, which led the MP to impute the crimes in the attempted formhighlighting, however, that a diplomat is not expected to receive a pen drive from a stranger without prior contact.
According to , the investigation also involved suspicions about a PJ inspector, who was later cleared, after concluding that he had only helped neighbors concerned about his daughter’s relationship with the defendant.
According to JN, the accused is the son of chemically dependent parents, having been institutionalized at birth and adopted at age five. He enlisted in the Army at 18, leaving four years later. His criminal activities began in Luxembourg, where he stole from hotels and airports.
