https://www.portugalresident.com/2019/07/25/shock-and-disbelief-after-portuguese-justice-frees-israeli-sex-trafficking-kingpin/By Natasha Donn 2019-07-25 Posted 2019-07-25 InTop Stories
Shock and disbelief after Portuguese justice frees Israeli ‘sex trafficking kingpin’
Authorities hunting a former Israeli soldier wanted for sex trafficking minors in Colombia heard with a mixture of shock and disbelief that a Portuguese judge has freed him.
National and international media were full of the arrest of Assi Moosh in Oeiras two months ago (click here).
Dubbing him “the baron of sex tourism” and “the devil of Taganga” (after the Colombian village where young women and minors were sexually exploited), the stories explained how authorities of various countries had been hunting Moosh down, with the purposes of getting him extradited to Colombia to face charges, including drug trafficking and money-laundering.
There was even talk of Moosh, 46, being involved in a possible homicide.
Focus on the holiday island of Ibiza led authorities to Barcelona, and later to Portugal.
Then, the ‘grand announcement’ that he had been ‘caught’ in an operation involving Spanish and Portuguese police, and would be held in preventive custody pending extradition to Colombia.
And then it all went quiet.
Now, both Israeli and Colombian sources have heard Moosh was released from custody on June 28 and “could be anywhere”.
“It’s completely crazy”, an Israeli journalist who has been tracking Moosh for years told us.
“None of us can understand it”.
Requests by the Resident for information – from the Public Ministry and PJ – elicited no response, but a news story in Colombian newspaper El Tiempo claims Moosh was freed by Lisbon judge María Guillhermina Vaz Pereira Santos, on the basis that legal time limits for his detention had expired, that the case was ‘complicated’ because Moosh claimed to understand no Spanish, and that Portugal anyway has no extradition agreement with Colombia.
Citing a Colombian official, El Tiempo said authorities in that country will now be trying, through Interpol, to secure another Blue Notice for Moosh’s recapture.
He is still wanted in Colombia for a multitude of offences, not least the “possible disappearance of one of his partners”.
El Tiempo adds that Moosh insists he is innocent, and that everything the media has said about him is false.
But this is not the only instance recently where an apparent wanted felon has been suddenly released after high-profile capture.
Back in March, newspapers here were full of the arrest in Malaga, Spain, of “the largest drug trafficker in Portugal”.
Frankelim Lobo was wanted in connection with Operation Achilles – an investigation that had been ongoing for years into a network of drug trafficking which has also implicated high-ranking policemen (click here).
But judge Ana Peres has now freed him from preventive custody, accepting that prosecutors’ arguments that he had ‘fled Portuguese justice’ were not in fact true. Lobo had apparently notified authorities “after leaving jail in 2014” that he would be moving permanently to Malaga.
Lobo is now bound to periodic reporting into his local police station – and the charge of criminal association has been dropped.
Say reports, the decision has dealt a major blow to the whole Achilles case, bearing in mind it is already being tried in the courts, and prosecutors’ case implicated Lobo as having a “principal role” within it.
Coincidentally perhaps, Achilles has a strong Colombian connection.
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See
https://www.portugalresident.com/2016/04/14/operation-achilles-sees-pj-top-brass-behind-bars/ for a few more details about Operation Achilles.
