Manuel Lourenço Gomez, 46, has been in jail since May 2022 after GNR caught him with 39 grams of cocaine in his car. However, after laboratory tests of the substance, the drug turned out to be sugar.
As we progress Newspaper This Sunday, the man had sugar in the glove compartment of his car because he was diabetic. GNR intercepted it in Verina, near Ourense, Spain, and confiscated the powder, suspecting it to be a drug. In a quick test at a pharmacy, the substance gave a positive result, and the military believed that they contained cocaine.
A few months later, laboratory tests determined that the substance was indeed sugar. However, prosecutors decided to keep the man in custody since May on suspicion that he was part of a human trafficking ring in Tras os Montes. This is because, according to H.N., the man was on his way to Portugal to visit a friend who had been under investigation a few months earlier for drug trafficking in Tras os Montes.
On November 11, laboratory tests by the SP showed that the substance was sugar, but both a member of parliament and a criminal judge in Torre de Moncorvo denied the release of Manuel Lourenzo. The arrest of the “drug” is no longer relevant, but the man is now suspected of being part of the Tras os Montes smuggling ring.
The man was placed in pre-trial detention after the first judicial interrogation and is still in the Braganza prison to this day.