At a press conference, the Faro district commander of the
PSP, Dário Prates, said that the three young people arrested, all aged 16, are
“the most active and violent” of the group, made up of eight boys and three
girls, all students and residents in Olhão.
"It was possible to relate the group to eight
occurrences, five for robberies and three for assaults, in the month of January
alone", he underlined, adding that today's police operation aimed at
"gathering evidence through carrying out six house searches", as well
as the arrest of three of the most active young people, with a view to their
presentation to the court.
According to the district commander, the PSP viewed more
than 20,000 videos, as well as hundreds of hours of images collected by the
video surveillance circuit cameras installed in the city of Olhão, images that
proved to be “essential for the investigation”.
"It is now known that the young people communicated
with each other through a closed group on Instagram, which they named 8700
[postal code for Olhão]", he said, adding that the group's action involved
choosing especially vulnerable victims.
According to Dário Prates, the attacks and robberies were
committed “using the strength of the collective, based on extreme gratuitous
and spontaneous violence, especially on the part of the three young men with
the highest ancestry in the group, who are now being held”.
Dário Prates added that he believes that the motivation was
not “mere xenophobia”, but rather the “exploitation of the vulnerability” of the
victims, mostly immigrants.
The crime committed against the Nepalese immigrant in Olhão
(Faro district), which became public through the sharing of a video on social
networks, was condemned by the Portuguese authorities, who considered it to be
“unacceptable behaviour” that must be “punished”.
In addition to the violent aggression, which took place on January 25, the group stole the victim's backpack, who did not press charges.