http://portugalresident.com/anger-as-young-welsh-woman-left-high-and-dry-in-portuguese-jailPosted by PORTUGALPRESS on July 27, 2017
The family of a young Welsh woman “stuck in a Portuguese jail” since April are at their wits end.
25-year-old Sophie Grey will not be granted bail as she has no Portuguese permanent address or family links, explains Wales Online.
Her father Roger said she is not even sure what she is meant to have done.
“She’s in a cell with four other people. The first person she met that could speak English was a murderer”.
Desperate for help, Roger Gray has approached his local MP David Davies.
Davies has described Sophie’s situation as “manifestly unfair”.
The MP for Monmouth is in touch with the Portuguese ambassador and foreign secretary Boris Johnson.
Hopes are that Sophie will be released and allowed home before the trial - scheduled for September 22.
Davies told reporters that as far as he is concerned, Sophie is being discriminated against.
“The whole point of the European Arrest Warrant is to ensure that people can be released before they attend court. It’s built on fair play and this isn’t fair play”.
As to Grey’s crime, this appears to be being treated as an assault on police.
Said her father, Sophie was in Portugal visiting her boyfriend who became “involved in an altercation with police”.
She was not there at the time, but “became agitated with police at her partner’s arrest and was charged with assaulting a police officer”.
“Sophie is not a violent person”, he added. “She’s quite feisty and she’ll stand her ground but she’s just a normal person in her 20s that wants to get on with her life.”
Former police officer Davies said that he doesn’t “condone any behaviour against the police but it’s manifestly unfair that she’s been in prison for something like that.
“If this happened in London, if she came up and yelled at an officer, they would have told her to calm down. If she continued she might have got a public order offence but it would have been a fairly minor crime.”
Roger Graey’s concerns are for his daughter’s well.being.
She is only allowed out of her cell into a concrete yard for two hours a day.
“Things are going backwards”, he told Wales Online. “At first we were told we would get her out in a couple of weeks, and home within a month, and it hasn’t happened”.
Sophie, who had been working in France, is “resigned to where she is”, he said, and “just trying to keep out of trouble”.
This appears to be the first time the story has surfaced, despite Sophie Grey’s arrest so many weeks ago. The BBC has since picked it up, so with any luck, developments may follow.
Roger Grey has told reporters that he did in fact find a place for his daughter to stay as she awaited the trial date, but “as there was not a family member living there, police feared she could abscond”.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
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When you know that Cristovao, charged with multiple crimes, is out & about in the community, the above case makes the Portuguese justice system even more of a laughing stock. The McCanns were right to employ lawyers immediately.
