The indictment says the workers ate stale bread and rotten meat, slept in unsanitary pigsties and corrals, and worked from dawn to dusk.
A woman and her son denied in court this Wednesday that between 2011 and 2016, as they are accused, they cajoled and took 19 workers from the North to agricultural farms in Spain, leaving them in “degrading conditions.”
In April 2023, the ex-husband and The father of the accused, respectively, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. by the São João Novo Court, in Porto, for trafficking 12 people.
At the beginning of the trial hearing, which took place in this same court, the defendants’ defense lawyer, João Peres, stated that mother and son, accused of kidnapping, slavery, coercion and fraud, “are victims”, recalling Furthermore, at the time of the events described in the indictment, the son was 13 years old.
During her testimony, the accused, who lives in Spain, assured that “she had nothing to do with the situation.”
“I just did what my ex-husband told me to do. “I was a victim of my ex-husband,” she shot.
The 49-year-old woman explained that she knew that her husband came to look for workers from Portugal to work for a certain period of time in Spain, but she denied that they lived in bad conditions.
“It is a lie that they had [trabalhadores] bad conditions. They were in old, but clean houses,” he stressed.
Assuming that she had “never seen anything out of the ordinary,” the defendant said that it was not raining inside the houses where the workers were, as the prosecution claims, that the freezers were full of meat and bread, and that the workers had cells. phones and documents in their possession, being able to enter and leave the room whenever they wanted.
In addition, the woman reinforced that she had little contact with the workers because her ex-husband was jealous as he did not know whether to pay them and how much.
Like the accused, the accused, his son, denied the crimes with which he was accused, remembering that at that time he was only 13 years old and was studying.
“I don’t know anything,” he confessed.
Prosecutors claim that mother and son deceived 19 workers with false promises of employment in Spain, placing them in “degrading conditions.”
Besides, The indictment alleged that the workers ate stale bread and rotten meat, slept in unhygienic pigsties and corrals, and worked from dawn to dusk.
Source: Observadora
