International Police Cooperation is key to law enforcement

By Joel Balsinha, Lisbon

Within the scope of the European Arrest Mandate, a woman and three men were extradited from France and Greece to Portugal in December for crimes of theft, fraud, forgery of documents, qualified theft, rape, sexual abuse of minors and debauchery of private life, money laundering, forgery of documents and criminal association. The international cooperation mechanism allowed the location and detention of these four people.

A woman and two men were extradited from France to national soil to serve a prison sentence of three to nine years for the crimes of theft, fraud, forgery, qualified theft, rape, sexual abuse of minors and the debauchery of life at the same time that a man from Greece was suspected of having committed money laundering, forgery of documents and a criminal association, and remained in pre-trial detention after being heard in court.

Despite these criminals running away, after the crimes, the Judicial Police, through the Interpol National Office, proceeded to execute and issue European arrest warrants, as there are facts punishable by law in this member state and through international police cooperation has managed to capture it.As far as we were aware “during the course of this year, a total of 152 extraditions were carried out. From arrest warrants issued by national judicial authorities, 101 extraditions to national territory from several European countries and Brazil were carried out and, following of arrests carried out in the national territory at the request of judicial authorities in other countries, fifty-one extraditions were carried out from Portugal to several European countries and to Brazil.

In this context, the remarkable effort made by the group of judicial and police authorities of different States to create the necessary conditions for citizens to fulfill their responsibilities towards justice, despite the extremely difficult situation resulting from the enormous constraints associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.The number of extraditions referred to above, carried out in the context of difficulties mentioned, is particularly relevant due to the numbers reached when compared to the last two years, in which the results were as follows: in 2018, a global total of 189 people, of whom there was a delivery of a foreign state to Portugal of 122 and a delivery from Portugal to a foreign state of sixty-seven. In 2019, a total of 231 individuals where the delivery of a foreign state to Portugal of 144 took place and the delivery of Portugal to a foreign state of eighty-seven “, according to data from the judicial police.

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