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The Judiciary Police announced on Friday the arrest of a 46-year-old man suspected of having committed a forest fire crime on Tuesday 18^th April 2017 in Barcelos.

In a statement, the PJ says that the man “has a criminal record for identical facts.”

According to police, the man whilst under the influence of alcohol started the fire “using a lighter, in a wood near his residence, also in the vicinity of other dwellings.”

The flames, according to the PJ, only did not reach greater proportions “due to the rapid intervention of the firemen”.

A 52-year-old man was detained in Coimbra by the Judiciary Police, caught in the act of downloading child pornography.

A source from the PJ’s Center Directorate told the Lusa news agency that the suspect, a health and safety technician at work, and without a criminal record, was detained on Wednesday 19th April  and subject to a term of Identity and Residence on the same day by the Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DIAP) of Coimbra.

The same source added that the investigation was based on a complaint from an international non-governmental organization that prosecutes users of child pornography.

In the context of the investigation, the PJ detected in the computer systems used by the suspect, several files with pornographic content involving minors, that were obtained through downloads from the Internet.

In the course of the operation, a computer, a tablet and a hard disk were used for this purpose.

“The Judiciary Police presented for the first judicial interrogation a 43-year-old male defendant, a native of Seixal, Setúbal,” said a statement read by the president of the Judicial Court of the District of Funchal this Friday.

Paulo Barreto added that “after questioning that began at approximately 06.05 pm and ended at 19.45 hours, the defendant was indicted for the crime of qualified homicide” and was subject to the preventive custody measure.

On Saturday, 36-year-old Ilidia Macedo was stabbed to death in the house where she lived, in the Ajuda area, in the municipality of Funchal, allegedly by her former companion, and died at the scene.

The suspect is Valter Moreno, 43, a former athletic trainer at Sporting and currently a personal trainer and race teacher.

According to a police source, the suspect “tried to flee” and “attacked the Public Security Police (PSP)” who were summoned to the scene, which immobilized him firing a shot that hit him in the knee.

Police source told Jornel de Noticais that the alleged murderer was also found stabbed, having been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of Dr. Nélio Mendonça Hospital in Funchal because of those injuries.

The crime occurred at 5 o’clock in the apartment of Idília Macedo, where he had recently moved, after the separation of Valter Moreno.

Last year, an average of seven children a day were reported as mistreated. That is, 2719 signs of physical and psychological abuse were made where children were victims at juvenile committees. These are preliminary data from the annual report of the National Commission for the Promotion of the Rights and Protection of Children and Young People (CNPDPCJ), as reported in the Diario de Noticias (DN).

Despite the slight decrease in cases compared to 2015, the situations that arrive at the commissions show more and more cruelty in the aggressions, with objects like electric cables, tires, whips or metal spoons, being used. And there were 360 ​​children from 0 to 5 years who were victims of this type of beating. “There has been a dangerous increase in the exposure of minors to cruelty such as domestic violence,” explained Dora Alvarez of the technical team of the National Commission.

In Portugal, more than 12,000 children are exposed to behaviour that affect their well-being, namely domestic violence, and this is the reason for a 30% of the signs of minors in danger made to CPCJ.

In the first quarter of this year alone, the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) opened 100 criminal cases for domestic violence against minors, more than a third of the total number of inquiries carried out last year (352), according to data from the Attorney General’s Office. DN. In the first three months, 15 charges were deducted. In all in 2016 54 were deducted.

Physical maltreatment occurred more in the 11 to 14 age group, with 541 cases, followed by the range of 6 to 10 with 523, 15 to 18 with 442 and 0 to 5 years with 360 cases. Corporal punishment also increased in 2016 – 100 cases compared to 96 in 2015.

The majority of victims of the 832 psychological maltreatment were girls (50.5%), with the exception of the age group of 6 to 10 years, in which there were more boys (245) to be humiliated or offended by their parents. Most of the assaults were reported by hospitals.

In all, the PSP have identified about 50 people and seized 200 individual doses of laurel leaves that were being sold as fake drugs. In the year 2016, for example, there were almost 800 counts of illegal street vending in the Baixa – the other common misconduct here is misleading advertising.

According to the PSP the legal framework does not allow us to do much more than this as this activity is misdemeanour.

About 80% of what is sold on the street in Baixa is pressed laurel leaves “, explained the Commander of the 1st Division of the PSP of Lisbon, Paulo Flor, at the start of a campaign to create greater awareness of this issue; an initiative of PSP with the support of the Parish Council of Santa Maria Maior.

We have received many complaints from people complaining about insecurity and bad environment. Also because many of those individuals have aggressive behaviour, “explained Miguel Coelho, president of the parish council of Santa Maria Maior.

Comment

This is a subject that Safe Communities has raised several times with the PSP in Lisbon and Faro. In a survey undertaken by Safe Communities Algarve three years ago over half of some 135 tourists interviewed in Praia da Rocha, Algarve had been offered fake drugs. The fact that this activity is only under the law a misdemeanour, allows this to continue, as there no effect deterrent.

On 9^th April at 22.05 hrs the PSP Lisbon Metropolitan Command, through the Division of Criminal Investigation, Lisbon, arrested two men and one woman, aged between 30 and 49, in Olivais for drug trafficking.

During the operation the following were seized:

– 4,230 Individual doses of Heroin;
– 190 Individual doses of Cocaine;
– 38 Individual doses of Hashish;
– 7,620 Euros and 1 precision balance.

The detainees, with criminal records related to the same type of illicit activities, were presented at the Central Instance, 1st Criminal Investigation Section of the Court of the District of Lisbon, for 1st judicial interrogation, having been applied the coercion measure of Pre-trial detention

 

The National Republican Guard carried out, from April 5 to 9, throughout the national territory, an operation to supervise the exercise of private security activity, in order to detect irregular situations in the performance of these functions.

In the course of the operation, the GNR Territorial Commands and the Tax Action Unit detained a person for an unlawful exercise of private security activity and detected 164, mainly:

• 56 regarding vigilantes;
• 46 relating to video surveillance systems;
• 24 relating to catering establishments and beverages with dance floors;
• 20 relating to commercial areas.

The private security activity presently plays an important role in protecting people and property and in preventing and deterring the practice of illicit acts, in a complementary and subsidiary way to the activity of the security forces.

The Portuguese authorities (Judiciary Police and Public Prosecutor’s Office) have sent more than 8,000 requests directly to Facebook, Microsoft and Google since 2013 to obtain evidence in cases of cybercrime suspicions.

The Diario de Noticais which covered the story states these are crimes of a distinct nature but with one point in common: those undertaken through the internet and between computers. Fraudulent online sales cases (which take up a significant portion of cybercrime), identity theft, fake profile creation on Facebook, child pornography, or bank phishing.

The data are contained in the Annual Report of the Office of Cybercrime (affection for the Office of the Attorney General) and evaluates the period from January 2013 to June 2016.

In detail, the authorities sent 2,622 requests for clarification directly to the company of Mark Zuckeberg, 2847 to Microsoft and 2798 to Google. A total of 8267 requests sent through a direct contact, thus dispensing with the most bureaucratic routes. A method of work admitted since 2013 in which these three North American operators were approached by the Portuguese Public Prosecutor’s Office “for the purpose, which was accepted, of establishing criteria of understanding and cooperation. As a result of this approach, it became possible to formulate directly requests to those US service providers, “the report explains. ” No need to resort to the channels of international cooperation.

This mechanism has proven to be highly effective in practice, facilitating the collection of essential information for criminal investigation expeditiously without the need for bureaucratic complexities of mutual legal assistance mechanisms. ”

The report also reveals that cases of child pornography – some of these cases carried through social networks and websites – have increased. From October 2013 to June 2016, the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DCIAP) received 2880 reports. Of these, 1350 gave rise to the opening of inquiry, of which 601 were sent to regions. According to the 2016 Annual Homeland Security Report – revealed this month – crimes of child pornography on the Internet grew by 36 % Compared to 2015.

 

Agents of the Spanish National Police and the Police of Catalonia dismantled an organized criminal group that stole high-end vehicles, after renting them with fake documents and then sold them in Libya and Algeria. Source Jornel de Noticais

In a joint statement, police explained that four men – three men and one woman of Moroccan and Tunisian nationality – had been detained in the operation and that the group had rented one million euros worth of vehicles in Spain, Portugal, Germany and Luxembourg.

Once the vehicles were rented, the members of this criminal group replaced the license plates with false ones and transported the cars to the port of Genoa, Italy, where they were shipped to Tunis, Tunisia, and then proceeded by land to the place of sales.

According to the Spanish news agency EFE, a large number of documents related to the illicit traffic of vehicles have been seized in the households that the group members had registered in the cities of El Papiol, Centelles and L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (all in the province of Barcelona) computer, credit cards, different car keys, a fake document detector, number plates and a forger kit.

The police operation began in May 2016, when the Catalan police learned that a man of Spanish nationality and Tunisian origin had stolen several high-end vehicles in several European countries to send them to the African continent.

Given the coincidence of another parallel investigation of the same criminal group by the National Police, a joint investigation team was created under the supervision of the judicial authority.

The detainees are charged with 20 crimes of misappropriation, falsification of documents and money laundering.

After being heard by the authorities, one of the three detainees was held in custody.

 

The National Republican Guard, SEPNS’s unit conducted from April 3 to 9, throughout the national territory, Operation COBRA under its remit of protecting wildlife species. The aim was to prevent, detect and repress situations of trafficking, exploitation, commercialization and possession of such animals.

During the operation, the military of the Territorial Commands, in coordination with the SEPNA structure, inspected 170 commercial establishments and nine fairs, with the following results:

• 38 cases of misconduct;
• 37 animals seized;
• 14 handicrafts made with animal parts (ivory) seized.

This Operation took place within the framework of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which regulates international trade in specimens of species of wild fauna and flora (live specimens of animals and plants and their Parts and derivatives) on the basis of a system of licenses and certificates proving their legal origin.