Provisional prison for the mother and two other detainees in the plot for the alleged sale of minors in Badajoz

The chief judge of Plaza 4 of the Investigation Section of the Court of Instance of Badajoz has decreed provisional prison with notice and without bail for three of the four detained for an alleged plot of sale of minors between one and eleven years old carried out in Badajoz, Portugal and Linares (Jaén). They are the children's mother, her partner and a man who had one of the children, aged five, in his home in Badajoz.

In this case, according to the prison order, the alleged sale of at least three minors, children of one of those investigated, is being investigated, which occurred between the years 2023 and 2025 with the help, knowledge and intermediation of third parties, including the alleged parents of the children.

Those investigated are two men and two women and provisional detention has been agreed for the two men and one of the two women, with the second being released (the children's grandmother).

The court maintains open proceedings for the crimes of alteration of affiliation, abandonment of minors, falsification of documents, illegal possession of weapons and traffic safety.

The three investigated for whom provisional detention has been ordered have taken advantage of their constitutional right not to testify. The fourth person detained, the partner of the man arrested in Badajoz, has testified and has been released, although with charges.

The mother - 34 years old and of Spanish nationality - was arrested on Wednesday at the home where she lived in Zafra (Badajoz) and where, according to investigation sources, she was a prostitute and consumed narcotic substances. The grandmother of the children sold in exchange for money yet to be determined lived in the same house because no large financial amounts have been found in the house, so the specific role of the children's parents (one of them of Romanian nationality) in this plot is also being investigated, according to sources in the investigation reported to EL MUNDO, although the mother was aware at all times of the sale of her children. In this way, several of the births would have taken place at home so that the children would not be officially registered as newborns.

'Operation Moon', developed by the National Police with the support of the Civil Guard, started in April, through information received from the Portuguese Judicial Police in the UFAM unit of the provincial judicial police brigade of the Badajoz Provincial Police Station, where they requested data from the mother and father of a one-year-old minor who could have been sold in Portugal.

In addition, they learned that he had four other children, also minors, who would live in the towns of Linares and Badajoz with other relatives, acquaintances and in juvenile centers in Badajoz, supervised by the Government of Extremadura. Likewise, there was a sixth daughter, four years old, warded by the Portuguese administrative authorities, who was allegedly sold.

During the development of the investigations, the agents were able to locate sufficient evidence to assume the alleged sale of the minors located in Portugal, in Badajoz and in Linares, which is why they requested entry and registration in the two towns, Montijo and Badajoz, with the intention of recovering all possible documentation, arresting the people allegedly involved and locating the minors in order to verify their situation.

In addition to the arrests of the people involved, numerous Spanish and Portuguese documentation, mobile phones, a hunting shotgun stolen in Almendralejo, another shotgun with the number erased, a large machete and numerous ammunition of different calibers were seized in the Badajoz neighborhood of La Luneta.

Specifically, in Badajoz three of those involved were arrested, two women and a man, and in Montijo (Badajoz) the main person under investigation was arrested with her current partner. In Linares (Jaén) to a man, with whom one of the minors resides.