PSP Detains 10 Travelers With Fake Papers on Athens Flights to Lisbon
Police held 10 foreign passengers at Lisbon's Humberto Delgado Airport over forged documents on Athens flights. What happened and what comes next.
Portugal’s Public Security Police (Polícia de Segurança Pública, PSP) detained 10 people at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado Airport between Sunday and Thursday on suspicion of using forged or false documents. All of them had arrived on flights from Athens, Greece.
The PSP said the detainees are foreign nationals of several different nationalities. They have been sent to appear before the competent judicial authority, which will decide what happens to them while the cases go forward.
How the checks on Athens flights worked
The arrests came out of inspection operations aimed at passengers landing from the Greek capital. According to the PSP, the checks were run by its Lisbon airport security and border control division (Divisão de Segurança Aeroportuária e Controlo Fronteiriço, DSACF).
Diário de Notícias gave a slightly fuller picture. The newspaper reported that the detentions were made by the PSP’s national unit for foreigners and borders (Unidade Nacional de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras, UNEF), while the DSACF carried out the controls at the airport. It dated the operation from Nov. 1 to Nov. 5, the same window that Observador and Jornal de Notícias described as running from Sunday to Thursday.
During the checks, officers identified cases in which passengers allegedly used documents that were either fake or altered. The police did not disclose which nationalities were involved, what kind of documents were presented or where the travelers planned to go after landing in Lisbon.
What happens to the 10 detainees
After the arrests, the suspects went through the legal procedures that apply in such cases and were referred to a judge, the PSP said. Diário de Notícias reported that the coercive measures had not yet been made public. In Portugal these measures (medidas de coação) are the conditions a judge sets while a criminal case is open, which can range from regular reporting to the police up to pretrial detention.
No further court dates were announced by the police.
Why it matters for people flying into Lisbon
The PSP presented the Athens operation as part of its ongoing work to prevent and fight document fraud and the crime that comes with international travel. In its statement, the force said this work protects the security of the Schengen area, the group of European countries that dropped routine passport checks at their shared borders, and the reliability of border controls.
For residents and frequent travelers, the case shows that police at Humberto Delgado run targeted checks on specific incoming routes, in this case flights arriving from Athens. The PSP did not say whether similar operations are planned for other routes or how long the checks on Athens arrivals will continue.
Sources: Observador, Jornal de Notícias, Diário de Notícias
