SAO PAULO: Twenty-three Brazilian police were sentenced to 156 years in jail each yesterday for their role in the killing of 111 inmates in 1992 during Brazil’s deadliest-ever prison uprising.
The policemen, most of them now retired, were accused of killing 15 prisoners in Sao Paulo’s Carandiru prison during the operation to quell the revolt on October 2, 1992, which came to be known as the “Carandiru massacre.”
Survivors had described scenes of chaos, accusing police of firing on inmates who had already surrendered or were hiding in their cells. In addition to the 111 prisoners who were killed, another 87 were wounded.
No police were harmed in the operation, but the defence said they fired in self-defence after being threatened and assaulted by the prisoners. Three other policemen in the trial were cleared of wrongdoing.
Defence lawyer Ieda Ribeiro de Souza slammed the narrow verdict, saying she had already appealed the sentences.
“One vote made the difference. I did not expect any condemnation,” she told reporters. “The sentence does not reflect the thinking of Brazilian society. One juror decided the future of these men.”
But prosecutor Fernando Pereira da Silva said he was “absolutely satisfied” with the verdict, calling the punishment “adequate.”
Fellow prosecutor Marcio Friggi defended the military police as an institution but stressed the need to punish “rotten apples.”
Authorities had initially claimed the police were trying to break up a fight between prisoners who had seized control of one of the cell blocks.
But findings later suggested military police had shot prisoners and then destroyed evidence that could have determined individual responsibility for the killings. No one is currently serving jail time over the incident.
AFP
