Lisbon cracks down on drug traffickers

This Monday, the PSP announced that it had dismantled a drug trafficking network in Muraria, Lisbon last week in an operation in which 13 people were arrested, two of whom were in custody.

The thirteen detainees, 10 men and three women, aged between 23 and 76, “were involved in the sale of drugs, cocaine, heroin and hashish in an organized and structured manner,” the PSP said in a statement.

“With clear cooperation and division of functions, the detainees acted inside Bairro da Mouraria with great insight, in accordance with rigor, tactical and technical discipline,” underlines the PSP.

The operation was part of a six-month criminal process that resulted in the issuance of six home search warrants and two residence search warrants on November 22 and 23, and the arrest of 13 suspects. at the crime scene. .

After the action on November 22, PSP added, “in less than 24 hours, they returned to ‘open a bank’ in a very close location, where the police caught them by surprise immediately after the resumption of illegal activities.”

According to the PSP, the leader of the group had a residence “fortified and protected from police interference” with an annex and “another hiding place to drain” drugs with other elements.

During the operation, 3,669.2 individual doses of cocaine, 4,285.2 individual doses of heroin, 2,078.58 individual doses of hashish, 3.4 individual doses of marijuana, as well as 7,652.08 euros, 10 illegal weapons and other items related to it.

After interrogation at the first judicial interrogation, two of the detainees remained in preventive detention, and the rest with periodic representations, with the exception of two, who were left with an identity card and a period of residence.

The PSP emphasized that Muraria, “despite ongoing efforts by the police and the judiciary, has geographic and social features that contribute to the ongoing resurgence of drug sales.”

Previous interventions in the neighborhood, namely in May and June 2021, culminated in harsh sentences for human trafficking with de facto imprisonment of more than four years for nine defendants.

According to the police, in 2021, 72 people were arrested as part of the criminal investigation in Muraria alone, 14 of them were arrested on a provisional basis, and the rest are subject to periodic presentations.

This year, “also exclusively from the point of view of the criminal investigation, 37 people were kept there, of which six were in pre-trial detention, one was under house arrest and one was in a pre-trial detention center to serve a sentence,” he added.