Two Officers from Lisbon's Esquadra do Rato Sent for Trial on Torture and Sexual-Assault Charges — 13 Vulnerable Victims, 36 Combined Counts, Instructory Decision Read Out on Monday Morning

An instructing judge in Lisbon on Monday morning ordered two officers from the Esquadra do Rato of the PSP to stand trial on charges of torture and sexual assault on vulnerable persons. The decision — the most consequential ruling in a case the Public Ministry has been building since at least mid-2025 — closes the instrução phase and confirms, in essentially the same terms as the prosecution's accusation, that the conduct described in the file rises to the level of crime against the integrity of detained persons.

What the decision says

The two officers referred for trial face a combined 36 counts: 29 against the principal defendant and seven against the second. The instructing judge wrote that the accusation "runs in essentially the same terms" as the indictment delivered by the Public Ministry, allowing the trial phase to open without paring back the catalogue of crimes the prosecution had set out. The remaining seven suspects from the original group of nine are still under investigation in a phase the Public Ministry has not yet closed.

The at least 13 alleged victims were, according to the file, persons in vulnerable situations whom the agents had taken to the Rato police station after detentions for low-level offences. The conduct under investigation includes physical abuse fitting the legal definition of torture under Article 243 of the Portuguese Penal Code and aggravated sexual assault on detainees who, by virtue of being in police custody, were in a position of acute dependency on the very officers facing trial.

How the case got here

The case became public last summer. Público first reported on 10 July 2025 that Public Ministry investigators had carried out searches at the Esquadra do Rato as part of a broader inquiry into mistreatment of detainees, and that the file had been built around victim testimony, internal PSP records and the contents of mobile phones seized during the operation. Today's instructory decision, read by the magistrate at the criminal-instruction court in Lisbon, formalises the shift from inquiry to trial for the two principal defendants.

The Esquadra do Rato sits in Lisbon's central Rato neighbourhood, on the border between Estrela and Santo António, and is one of the busiest urban PSP stations in the country. It was the same station whose internal complaints file first flagged the existence of irregular practices in the unit — a complaint that the Public Ministry then transformed into a formal inquiry.

Why it lands politically

The trial will play out alongside a separate set of institutional pressures on the police. The IGAI — the Inspecção-Geral da Administração Interna — has spent the past two years pushing for clearer protocols around the use of force, body-cameras and the treatment of vulnerable detainees, and the Conselho Superior do Ministério Público is currently revising its own guidance on how cases of detained-person abuse should be channelled. The Rato case has been cited by both bodies as one of the test files that exposes weaknesses in the chain that runs from station-level supervision to the formal disciplinary track.

It also lands as the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) prepares its next periodic visit to Portuguese detention facilities, scheduled for late 2026. Portugal has, in the CPT's most recent report, been pressed to move faster on systematic recording of detainee complaints and on independent oversight of police custody — both areas that the Rato file makes harder to defer.

What happens next

With the instructory phase closed, the case will be distributed to a trial court. No date has yet been set for the opening session, and the defence is expected to file pre-trial motions in the coming weeks. The two officers remain under judicial measures pending trial; the Public Ministry has not commented publicly beyond confirming the instructory outcome. The seven suspects still under investigation will be charged or filed away separately, in decisions expected later this year.

For the PSP, the trial is the first time in more than a decade that a Portuguese court will hear a torture case built around an active urban police station. The verdict, when it comes, will be read closely — not just inside the force but at the IGAI, the CSMP and the CPT.