Lisbon PSP Arrests 18 Drug Traffickers in Three Months - Residents Held Hostage in Buildings

Investigators from the PSP in Lisbon are dedicated to freeing the neighborhoods of Quinta do Loureiro and Cabrinha from drugs.

In just three months (between March and the current month), PSP investigators arrested 18 drug traffickers who were holding residents of buildings in the social neighborhoods of Quinta do Cabrinha and Loureiro, in the Alcântara area of Lisbon, hostage.

The latest operation by the Lisbon Criminal Investigation Division (DIC), aptly named 'Locked Doors', took place between May 16 and 22. As in March, when it made another nine arrests, the DIC gathered information that residents, especially the elderly, were still being denied access to their homes through blockades of building doors.

The traffickers even placed "physical barriers along the stairs leading to the apartments," to hinder potential police actions and facilitate their escape.

With the planning of several actions over seven days, the DIC managed to arrest four women and five men, between the ages of 20 and 50. With the detainees, and after home searches, the PSP seized 690 doses of various hard drugs, 4000 euros, and material linked to trafficking.

The court applied preventive detention to five of the nine detainees in this operation, adding to the seven preventive detentions from the operation carried out in March.