Polícia Judiciária de Portugal
Founding partner. The Portuguese PJ provided technical assistance for the creation of PCIC, trained its first investigators and forensic specialists, and supplied the institution's organisational model.
The partnership with the Judicial Police of the Portuguese Republic is the oldest and most structuring of all PCIC's international cooperation relationships. It is not a partnership between equals coming together - it is a founding relationship, without which PCIC simply would not exist in its current form.
The formal relationship began with the Cooperation Protocol between the Ministries of Justice of Timor-Leste and Portugal, signed in Díli on 21 August 2008. The agreement acknowledged a difficult reality: Timor-Leste did not have specialised criminal-investigation capacity. A technical mission that visited the country in 2009 concluded that criminal investigation was "virtually non-existent" and that existing investigators lacked the knowledge and competence to conduct effective criminal inquiries. Portugal committed to helping change that.
What followed was the creation of an entire institution from scratch. The Portuguese Judicial Police provided technical assistance for PCIC's organic and functional design, contributing the model of hierarchical organisation, specialised career path, and investigative methodology that still guides the institution today. Between 2011 and 2012, the first 66 Timorese investigators - selected from over 200 candidates - travelled to Lisbon and completed 850 hours of theoretical and practical training at the Judicial Police Academy. The ten top graduates also undertook additional training for leadership roles. In 2016, a second group of 30 investigators completed the same path.
PCIC's forensic laboratory was likewise built with PJ support. Timorese specialists in toxicology, document examination, and ballistics were trained at the Portuguese Judicial Police laboratories between 2012 and 2016, returning to Timor-Leste with the technical and scientific competence required to operate a criminalistics laboratory with judicial standing.
This partnership is not only historical - it is active and strategic. Portugal and Timor-Leste share the Portuguese language, a legal system of Lusophone origin, membership of the CPLP, and a long-standing bilateral relationship. The PJ remains a privileged reference point for PCIC in continuous training, the updating of investigative methodologies, and cooperation in specific cases involving suspects, assets, or evidence in Portuguese territory or in Portuguese-speaking countries. The 2020-2030 Strategic Plan foresees the formalisation of this relationship through a Memorandum of Understanding, consolidating in a legal instrument a partnership that has already proved its value.