The GNR Ruled Out a Hit-and-Run in Olhao That Same Night Because Two Blood Stains Sat Seven Metres Apart, and the Judicial Police Did Not Come
The trial of two PSP officers charged with the kidnapping and qualified homicide of Aissa Ait Aissa opened in Faro on Tuesday. A GNR sergeant told the court the PJ saw no sufficient indications to attend, and an inspector said the investigation began two months later.
On the night of 9 March 2024, GNR accident investigators were called to a track outside Olhão known locally as the caminho da sucata, where a Moroccan man had been found with a crushed skull. A witness had suggested he might have been hit by a car. The GNR's Núcleo de Investigação de Crimes em Acidentes de Viação looked at the scene and said within hours that this was not what had happened.
Sergeant Hélder Fatana told the Faro court on Tuesday what his team found: two patches of blood roughly seven metres apart, a pattern that "was not compatible" with the dynamics of a vehicle striking a pedestrian, and which instead pointed to an earlier event of "intentional" origin. The GNR passed that assessment to the Polícia Judiciária duty desk the same night. The PJ, he told the judges, decided there were "not sufficient indications for them to travel" to the scene.
A PJ inspector, giving evidence later in the day, said the investigation only began "two months after the facts". By then, forensic tests on the patrol car and on the officers' extendable batons found no biological traces.
The trial that opened on Tuesday
Aissa Ait Aissa died on 28 March 2024 at the Hospital de Faro, 19 days after he was admitted, of encephalic contusion with subarachnoid haemorrhage and refractory cerebral oedema. Two PSP officers from Olhão, Jorge Sousa and Pedro Barbosa, went on trial in Faro on Tuesday charged with two counts of aggravated kidnapping and one of qualified homicide. We reported when the date was set in August. Both men deny any responsibility for the death.
Their account in court was that they were called twice on the same day to disturbances at supermarkets in Olhão involving Ait Aissa and a second man, Hassan Ait Rahou. After the second call the shop worker declined to make a complaint, so the officers say they agreed with both men to drive them home and out of the area. The two travelled handcuffed in the back of the patrol car, which the officers described as standard self-protection practice. They said the men directed them towards Pechão, outside the Olhão urban perimeter, appeared to be drunk or under the influence of drugs but were "peaceful" and "calm", and were "conscious" when they were left there.
What the prosecution says happened
The Ministério Público's indictment says that once outside the vehicle, "for reasons not established, the defendants, acting in concert, struck several blows to the head and face of Aissa Ait Aissa", at least one of them delivered with an object. It says he could not defend himself because he was handcuffed, and that the officers "gravely abused" their authority knowing their conduct was criminal and could cause death.
Aníbal Coutinho, a doctor at the Unidade Local de Saúde do Algarve who examined the body, told the court that a road collision was "out of the question" because the injuries did not match one. The cause of death, he said, was an intentional assault that produced a depression on the left side of the skull, and asked directly by the prosecutor, he agreed that an extendable baton could be an instrument capable of causing that kind of injury.
The court also told the parties on Tuesday that Hassan Ait Rahou, the second alleged kidnapping victim, could not be located and will not testify. Two further sessions are listed, on 11 and 25 September. Both officers have been suspended from duty since the charges were brought, and the dead man's parents have a civil claim of 1.6 million euros against the state attached to the case.
