Kidnap and extortion suspects freed after arrest warrants cite wrong crime – Portugal Resident
Three people suspected of kidnapping, extortion, robbery and serious assault have been released after a judge found that their arrest warrants wrongly referred to attempted aggravated murder.
Loures Criminal Investigation Court declared the warrants invalid following the suspects’ first judicial hearing, and ordered their immediate release.
The man and two women remain subject to identity and residence requirements, meaning they must keep the authorities informed of their address and appear when summoned.
Their release does not amount to an acquittal or the termination of the investigation. But it does mean that they ‘walk free’.
The trio was arrested by the Polícia Judiciária in Lourinhã “outside the act of committing an offence”.
The judge however has now annulled both the arrest warrants, and the Public Prosecutor’s order authorising them because the documents referred to attempted aggravated murder — an offence that, according to the court, does not form part of the case under investigation.
Evidence seized during the operation was nevertheless declared valid because the searches and confiscations had been carried out lawfully.
The case has now been returned to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Victim allegedly held for three hours
The arrests were announced yesterday following an investigation by the PJ’s National Counterterrorism Unit into offences allegedly committed in Torres Vedras and Leiria.
According to police, the case began in December 2024 when a victim was lured to a house near Torres Vedras by the false promise of work.
The victim was allegedly confronted by four people and held against his will for approximately three hours.
The group is suspected of threatening the victim and demanding that his family pay €40,000 over an alleged debt involving construction work that had not been completed.
Police believe the same suspects targeted the victim again in April this year during what the PJ described as a “new and particularly serious criminal incursion”.
They allegedly entered the victim’s home in the Leiria area, violently assaulted and threatened both the victim and his wife and forced both to make bank transfers totalling approximately €16,000.
But a kidnapping, two alleged violent attacks and €16,000 in coerced transfers have, for the moment, produced three released suspects – and an urgent lesson in proofreading arrest warrants.
Source: noticiasaominuto/ Lusa
