The Public Prosecution Service (MP) confirmed the suspicions against an alleged terrorist wanted in India who also committed crimes in Portugal. Iqbal Singh, along with four other defendants, was charged this week with crimes of kidnapping, robbery and violation of qualified physical integrity, allegedly committed against another Hindustani citizen in Odivelas in August last year.
Singh, a native of India, who belongs to an insurgent organization in Pakistan, of an Islamic nature, who intends to conquer Kashmir, is said to have committed serious crimes in his country and was detained by the judicial police last October, along with three others suspects, all of whom are in pre-trial detention.
This suspect, wanted in India for terrorism, criminal association and heroin trafficking, had already been arrested before, in 2020, when he tried to get a residence permit and the authorities found the existence of an international arrest warrant.
The case was revealed by CNN Portugal, who also said Iqbal was being held in preventive detention pending the decision of the Court of Appeal (which decides on extradition requests).
The Indian authorities also requested extradition with “the sovereign and irrevocable guarantee” that the defendant would not be subject to a sentence of more than 25 years, the limit provided for in our Penal Code (Portugal does not extradite to countries with the death penalty or life imprisonment, as is the case in India). However, the judges decided to reject it and Iqbal was eventually set to be released in October 2021.
Less than a year later, in August 2022, according to the MP’s description, he was approached by relatives of the victim’s wife (NS) in this case, unhappy with the couple’s separation that had taken place a few weeks earlier. They wanted to take revenge on the man and asked Iqbal to beat him and force him to pay about 45,000 euros.
Enlisting the help of other compatriots, Iqbal used a woman, also of Hindustani descent, as “bait” to attract NS, who convinced him to help her in an alleged move from Lisbon to Torres Vedras.
On August 26, at Senhor Roubado metro station, Odivelas, where he had arranged to meet his wife, he received another call from her that there was an apartment nearby that he should go to.
Attacked and abandoned for 20 minutes
But when NS arrived at the door of the building, a surprise awaited him: he was “suddenly and abruptly approached by three or four persons”, he testified, also Hindustani.
According to the allegation deduced by the Lisbon Department of Investigations and Criminal Action (DIAP), “while two of them grabbed his hands”, the rest “gave numerous blows to his back, head and pushed him to the first floor, causing he was forced to enter the existing apartment there”.
At that place, it is pointed out, there were other defendants, including Iqbal, who continued the aggression for “about 20 minutes” with “countless punches, blows, kicks and elbows, through various parts of the body” and, heightened, him laying on the ground and continuing to “punch, kick and punch him”.
While the attacks were taking place, the MP claimed, Iqbal used the victim’s mobile phone to make a video call to India and spoke to the offended brother-in-law and father-in-law who told him to “hit him more”. One of those present took the belt out of NS’s trousers and hit him on the back and head with it. “We’re going to throw you off a bridge,” said one of them, who also asked him why he had left his wife. He was then stripped of his trousers and underpants and one of the defendants “applied about 10 blows to the genital area”.
According to the prosecution, it was Iqbal Singh who told NS that he would have to pay the 45,000 euros to be delivered to the woman’s family in India or they would kill him. They also forced him to “touch his nose to the ground, as a form of submission to them, a moment captured on video”. This abduction and aggression lasted until about 1:30 am on the 27th, when NS was taken and abandoned near the Campo Grande garden.
He asked a Bolt courier for help, who lent him his cell phone to call relatives for help, and a friend went to meet him and later took him to the hospital in Santa Maria. “The victim suffered from painful signs on the head and face, on the back, exuberant hematoma of the auricle sparing the lobe, ecchymosis, abrasions and edema on the head, face, neck, chest and right lower leg”.
The DIAP investigation in Lisbon, assisted by the Judicial Police’s National Counterterrorism Unit, identified five suspects, including Iqbal Singh, who filed charges. All have been in protective custody since being held by the PJ. The MP understands that the defendants’ assumptions about pre-trial detention have not changed and they must await the outcome of the trial in prison.
Source: DN
