Dário Prates, the Faro District Commander of the PSP, has confirmed today that so far, it has been possible to identify eleven young people, eight boys and three girls, aged between 14 and 16, belonging to the group, who participated in or witnessed the violent attacks on Nepalese immigrants.
A police criminal investigation was carried out, targeting the group of young people who attacked immigrants in Olhão and posted videos of the incidents on social media afterwards.
The day after the video was broadcast, all those involved in those attacks were identified. From the investigative steps it was possible to point out other violent occurrences associated with the same group - most of which had not been registered as a complaint. It was possible to associate the group with eight incidents, 5 for robberies and 3 for assaults, in the month of January alone.
Within the scope of the criminal investigation, the police viewed hundreds of hours of images from the video surveillance cameras installed in the city of Olhão, "which proved to be important for the identification of the aggressors".
During the course of the investigations, police say "more witnesses were heard and there was news of another violent occurrence, against a homeless person, still to be identified, as well as two robberies of Portuguese citizens".
After the evidence was presented to the Public Prosecutor's Office, search and arrest warrants were issued. Police collected evidence by carrying out 6 house searches and other investigative steps, and detained 3 of the most active young people in the group, with a view to their appearance to the court.
The young people are students and live in the city of Olhão. It is known that they communicated with each other through a closed group on “Instagram”, which they named “8700”.
The group's action involved choosing especially vulnerable victims, either because of their birthplace (Indian and Nepalese communities) or because of their social condition (homelessness), or because of their age (a 16-year-old victim) "using the strength of the collective, based on extreme gratuitous and spontaneous violence, especially on the part of the three oldest youths in the group, who are now being held".
The suspects are now charged with 5 counts of theft; 4 crimes of offense to qualified physical integrity; 1 crime of harm with violence.
Most of the identified victims are immigrants. Of the 8 flagged occurrences, the PSP only had a record of two of them – a robbery in which the victim is a 16-year-old Portuguese youth and a disturbance in an Indian restaurant.
None of the foreign victims of the crimes felt confident to file a criminal complaint "which clearly demonstrates their vulnerable condition", said the Commander of the PSP.
Source https://www.algarveprimeiro.com/
