Tribunal Reads Coação Measures Monday for the 14 Rato/Bairro Alto Police Officers — Ministério Público Asks Preventive Detention for Four Including a PSP Chief, House Arrest for Three

The Tribunal Central de Instrução Criminal at Lisbon's Campus da Justiça will read the formal medidas de coação for the fourteen Polícia de Segurança Pública officers detained in the joint Esquadra do Rato and Esquadra do Bairro Alto torture case on Monday 11 May 2026 at 09:00. The decision closes the first procedural arc of the most serious institutional misconduct file the Lisbon PSP has faced in two decades — and tees up a parallel disciplinary track at the IGAI that the Ministry of Internal Administration has already confirmed will run alongside the criminal process.

Who Is Detained, And On What

Of the original fifteen people detained on Tuesday 5 May after thirty searches across PSP facilities and private addresses, fourteen remain in the criminal process — thirteen agents and two chefes — after one officer was released immediately and the only civilian arguido (a private security guard) was released Thursday on a habeas corpus petition. The fourteen face nineteen counts of torture spread across nine identified victims, plus charges of physical assault, abuse of power, and falsification of police documents on nine separate occasions. One officer is charged by omissão for witnessing without intervening; another carries an additional charge of theft and violation of correspondence. With Tuesday's wave of arrests, the total count of PSP elements implicated in the wider Rato/Bairro Alto file rises to 24.

The Ministério Público's Asks

At Friday's interrogations and Saturday's defence-arguments hearing, the Public Prosecutor's Office filed a graduated coação table:

• Preventive detention (prisão preventiva) for four officers, one of whom is one of the two PSP chefes;
• House arrest (prisão domiciliária) for three agents;
• Suspension of duties + ban on contact with victims for the remaining seven.

Defence teams have argued that the file's evidentiary base — drawn from station CCTV, body-cam fragments, internal disciplinary statements and at least two cooperating witnesses — does not yet meet the standard for the strongest measures. The decision rests with the Juiz de Instrução Criminal of turno.

What Foreign Residents Should Take From the Case

• If you have been detained at a Lisbon PSP station and were physically mistreated: the Inspecção-Geral da Administração Interna (IGAI) is the disciplinary track that runs in parallel to the Ministério Público; complaints can be filed at igai.pt in Portuguese or English without first going to the police.
• The 22ª Esquadra (Rato) remains operational — the disciplinary file does not close the station, and proximity policing continues from the Largo do Rato address.
• Translation services at PSP stations are guaranteed under Article 92 of the Código de Processo Penal — never sign a Portuguese-language statement you have not been read in your own language.
• The queixa-crime deadline against police misconduct is six months from the act, but on physical-integrity offences the clock runs five years; cases reaching the Ministério Público today still cover acts dating back to 2021 in this file.

The next institutional step after Monday's coação decision is the Despacho de Acusação — the Ministério Público's formal indictment — which on a file of this size will likely take six to nine months. The trial venue, when set, will be a court of the Comarca de Lisboa; the constitutional gravity of the torture qualifier means the file is expected to be tried by a panel of three judges (Tribunal Coletivo) rather than a single sitting judge.