Portugal’s attorney general’s office and the Judicial Police (PJ) said in a joint statement that Fábio Loureiro, recaptured in Tangier by the authorities on 6 October 2024, was handed over today under international judicial cooperation.
“The formal extradition request was submitted in a timely manner by Portugal’s attorney general and was granted by the authorities of the Kingdom of Morocco,” they said. In October, the international police operation to capture the escaped prisoner was launched in less than 24 hours after the PJ discovered that his wife was preparing to visit him.
In today’s joint statement, the attorney general’s office and the PJ (the country’s main criminal investigation agency) explain that the operation had ‘strong support’ from the Moroccan National Police (CNP) and the Directorate-General for Territorial Surveillance (DGST), “based on credible information from the Judiciary that Fábio Loureiro, who was the subject of an international arrest warrant, was in Morocco”.
Fábio Loureiro has been convicted of kidnapping, drug trafficking, criminal association, armed robbery and evasion. Fábio Loureiro escaped from Vale de Judeus, along with four other inmates, on 7 September 2024, in an organised escape with collaboration from outside.
On 16 April, the Spanish police handed over to the Portuguese Judicial Police the British citizen Mark Cameron Roscaleer, who had escaped at the same time from Vale de Judeus and was recaptured in February in Alicante, in southern Spain. He has already been transferred to a prison to serve his sentence.
Roscaleer was captured along with Rodolfo Lohrman, a 59-year-old Argentine citizen, and handed over to the PJ by the Spanish authorities at the Police and Customs Cooperation Centre in Caia/Badajoz, the Judiciary said at the time.
Fábio Loureiro escaped from Vale de Judeus, along with four other inmates, on 7 September 2024, in an organised escape with collaboration from outside.
According to the Judicial Police, Roscaleer was taken to a prison to serve a nine-year sentence, which began on 10 May 2019, for “particularly violent crimes: armed robbery and kidnapping”.
Argentinian citizen Rodolfo Lohrman remains in Spanish territory because he opposed extradition to Portugal, asking to return to Argentina to serve the remainder of his sentence in that country. Also back in a Portuguese prison is Fernando Ferreira, recaptured in November in the district of Montalegre, in northern Portugal.
The Georgian fugitive Shergili Farjiani, recaptured in Italy in December, is expected to serve his sentence in that country, according to the Portuguese attorney general’s office.
The Georgian detainee who was found by the Italian authorities in Padua, northern Italy, “is accountable to the Italian justice system,” added the attorney general’s office, and for this reason “must serve his sentence” in Italy.
Although the arrest did not occur in flagrante delicto, Shergili Farjiani, the third fugitive from Vale de Judeus to be found, was already involved in “criminal groups dedicated to crimes against property,” as Luís Neves, national director of the Judicial Police, explained a day after the arrest.
Given this criminal context in Italy, he will have to answer to the justice system of that country.
These five prisoners escaped from Vale de Judeus prison on 7 September 2024 and their escape led the minister for justice to order an audit of security in Portuguese prisons and also led to the dismissal of the then director-general of the Directorate-General for Reintegration and Prison Services, Rui Abrunhosa Gonçalves, who was replaced on an interim basis by Isabel Leitão, with Orlando Carvalho being appointed as the new director-general.
When they escaped, the five inmates were serving sentences of between seven and 25 years in prison for drug trafficking, criminal association, robbery, kidnapping and money laundering, among other crimes.
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