Judge orders inmates to eat in the courtroom and leaves guards without lunch

The unusual thing occurred this Friday morning, during the instructional debate on “Operation Mirror” which aims to traffic people for work on agricultural farms. Normally, when prisoners go to court all day, they have lunch in the court dungeons or, when there are no conditions for this, they go to the nearest Prison Establishment. In this case, as the place where the instructional debate takes place does not have dungeons, what was planned was for the inmates to go to the Beja EP, which is about two kilometers away and already had 20 meals prepared for that purpose.

However, according to the SNCGP, at the end of the morning, the judge changed the plans. She said that there were only 30 minutes for lunch and that the prisoners could not go to Beja. She ordered meals to be ordered from a restaurant in the city and for inmates to eat in the courtroom itself.

Guards distributed meals and watched

To ensure the safety of the inmates while they were having lunch, the seven GISP guards, six guards from the Lisbon prison and some guards from the Odemira women’s prison who were on duty, were prevented from going to the EP in Beja for lunch. In addition to watching the inmates, they also had to distribute the meals.

The guards were only allowed to go to lunch after 3 pm and in pairs so as not to affect security. The 20 meals prepared at the EP for the inmates went to waste.

“No one is above the law, not even the judge”

Considering that the rights of prison guards were violated, the union said it will file a complaint against the judge to the CSM, accusing the judge of wanting to conclude the instructional debate hastily, as the defendants’ pre-trial detention period ends next week. “No one is above the law, not even the judge”, said Frederico Morais from SNCGP.

Criminal association, human trafficking and assistance to illegal immigration

‘Operation Mirror’ involves indictment for the crimes of human trafficking, criminal association, assistance to illegal immigration, recruitment of illegal labor, possession of a prohibited weapon and document forgery.

The operation, according to the Judiciary Police (PJ), made it possible to detect at least a hundred immigrants who were victims of exploitation on agricultural properties in Baixo Alentejo, especially in the municipalities of Cuba and Ferreira do Alentejo.

It was launched on November 21, 2023 by the PJ’s National Counter Terrorism Unit, as part of two investigations carried out by the Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DIAP) of Évora, involving around 480 operatives, who carried out 78 search warrants. home and non-home.

The victims are immigrants and, for the most part, were “enticed in their countries of origin, such as Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, India, Senegal, Pakistan, among others, to come and work on agricultural holdings in that region of our country”, said the P.J.