Leiria Court
Two men were going to be tried for drug trafficking, but one didn’t even show up. Judge leaves messages to DGRSP: it has happened in “so many other trials”.
O judgment of two men suspected of drug trafficking, scheduled to begin this morning in Leiria Courthe was postponed for the second time because prison did not return a defendantprompting criticism from the presiding judge.
“The schedule of the trial hearing, with several witnesses notified for four dates, and the agenda of this Court, with several cases of arrested and non-arrested defendants, do not sympathize with successive and unjustified postponements attributable to the General Directorate [de Reinserção e Serviços Prisionais, DGRSP]and which determine the postponement of many other trials”, stated the president of the collective court.
The trial was scheduled to begin on the 20th, but the defendant, preventively detained since August 31, 2024, was not notified in the Prison Establishment (EP) of Lisbon, where he is, nor taken to court, without any justification on the part of the prisonhe explained.
After being asked to justify, the EP reported having been a lapse e committed to bring the defendant on the designated dates, including today.
However, today, the defendant “was once again not taken to this Court, again without any communication or justification” of the EP, so the judge ordered the situation to be communicated to the Minister of Justice, the director general of the DGRSP, the director of the EP of Lisbon, the Superior Council of the Judiciary and the judge-president of the District of Leiria, asking for “good and speedy offices” to determine the “immediate delivery of the defendant” to the court to be tried.
The trial is now scheduled to start at 2:00 pm.
Or case
The defendants, uncle and nephew, are accused of increased drug trafficking, in co-authorship, of around six tons of cocaine valued at more than 200 million euros.
At stake are also a crime of criminal association, three of falsification of document (alleged use of false license plates on vehicles to transport drugs) and three others seizure, allegedly carried out by the uncle, aged 55, and detained preventively.
The nephew, aged 29, is also responsible for criminal association and two crimes of document forgery.
A company in the municipality of Batalha, of which this second defendant was a managing partner, but which was “in fact” managed by his uncle, will be responsible for the crime of drug trafficking increased in a real competition with the crime of document forgery, according to the Public Ministry.
The MP’s final order, supported by a criminal investigating judge, states that the two accused were part of an international drug trafficking network responsible for introducing into the country (to later disseminate to others in Europe) large quantities of drugs from Central and South America.
“The defendants negotiated the transportation of containers with fruit, charcoal, rice and soy flour”, where “large quantities of cocaine” were concealed, in exchange for high earnings, using the import/export of Batalha society “as a cover activity”.
The MP said that two employees of the Tax Authority (AT), one working in the port of Sines and the other in Setúbal, “in exchange for large amounts of money”, guaranteed that the containers with the hidden drugs “were cleared safely through customs” or, in the case of inspection, informed them.
According to the MP, the imports made by society from 2018 to 2024, “repeatedly obtaining, over the years, economic losses of thousands of euros, were not aimed at obtaining a profit from the sale of legal merchandise”, but rather at the importation of cocaine.
