This Wednesday, parliament unanimously approved the hearing of the Attorney General of the Republic on the slowness of justice and the “alleged chaos” in the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DCIAP), at the request of IL.
The request, which requests an urgent parliamentary hearing for Amadeu Guerra, was approved this Wednesday with the favorable votes of all parties present at the time of the vote – PSD, PS, Chega, IL, Livre, CDS-PP and BE – at the meeting of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees.
The IL parliamentary group says it is “aware of the sensitivity of the request, in light of the principle of separation of powers”.
“However, it understands that the present hearing is justified by the special gravity and institutional relevance of the facts in question, by the impact that the delay in the investigation phase has on the functioning of justice and on citizens’ trust, and by the need for parliamentary scrutiny on these problems – an effort for which it only requests the contribution of the Public Ministry itself”, explains the party.
IL mentions, among the reasons for this request for a hearing, news released by the online about the functioning of the DCIAP, based on the report of an inspection determined by the Superior Council of the Public Ministry of that service at the end of 2024.
“It apparently suggests that the slowness of justice in the investigative phase cannot be read simply as a direct consequence of an increase in volume or the growing complexity of the crime being investigated. On the contrary, it indicates weaknesses in terms of internal organization, procedural processing, available technological means, information flows and effective control over the conduct of processes”, points out IL.
According to Expresso, this report concluded that the Public Ministry’s largest investigation unit has no internal regulations and is the only department not to use Citius to process cases, “contributing to systematic management failures.”
“The scenario described is one of lack of control, with missed deadlines occurring regularly”, writes the newspaper, which points out problems such as “prolonged listening, years spent scanning evidence and serious communication failures”.
In the application, IL says that, in recent years, Portugal has seen “a very significant worsening of the slowness of justice in the investigation phase”.
“According to publicly accessible data on the ‘Números da Justiça’ platform, criminal investigations and educational guardianship investigations pending for more than 5 years in the Public Prosecutor’s Office rose from 611, in 2015, to 12,039, in 2024 – an increase of around 1870%”, points out the party.
For IL, these numbers reveal “the consolidation of a bag of old cases that the system continues to be unable to promote in a timely manner and that has concrete consequences for the justice sector”.
