Brazil’s São Paulo state top prison official Nagashi Furukawa resigned Friday two weeks after a wave of violence ordered by jailed gang leaders killed at least 150 people including 42 police and prison guards.
Apparently Mr. Furukawa, São Paulo state Director of Prisons, clashed with state officials over the handling of the situation, and police has been accused of the killing of 110 people in a spree of revenge following the first wave of attacks on police stations.
An independent commission made up of officials from the Attorney General’s Office, lawyers and human rights activists is scheduled to investigate claims of summary shootings by the police of innocent São Paulo residents.
Police officers have provided prosecutors with names and autopsy reports of the dead but have not furnished details of the circumstances of the deaths
Investigators are to focus specifically on the death of as many as 34 people in the São Paulo suburb of Guarulhos, one of the battlefields in the week-long war between police and the First Command of the Capital, PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital), whose leaders were angry at planned transfers to high security jails and the confiscation of cellular phones.
"Authorities deny abuses and police insist that their forces acted in legitimate defense and in compliance with their duty. But we understand that things did not exactly happen that way," said attorney Francisco Lúcio França.
Human rights groups claim that after the PCC launched attacks on police stations in São Paulo, security forces retaliated with a wave of vengeance killings in poor neighborhoods on the city’s outskirts.
França said it has been impossible to establish exactly how many people were summarily executed by police, and he blamed authorities for failing to release the complete list of victims and autopsies.
"We didn’t have access to the complete list and to autopsy findings," the lawyer said.
"The commission will probably request the findings and police bulletins that were not turned over to prosecutors."
If the panel determines that police engaged in summary executions, it will likely sue the state of Sao Paulo to obtain compensation for victims’ families.
Mercopress – www.mercopress.com
Show Comments (5)
Guest
First comment….
You’re spot on. We need to give the police the support to clean out the rubbish. All these pinko, bleeding hearts must live in some Alice of Wonderland world to imagine that feeling simpathy with drug dealers/addicts, thugs, and outright murderers will change them for the better. In my oppinion it’s bullet in the head
time. We need a ‘night of the long knives’ and take all the gang leaders, their friends and supporters, all down at one and the same time. The police and intelligence services know exactly who they are, where they are to be found.
Guest
????
Why the Brazilian government, justice and society do not expect the same in depth investigation…as to when Jean Charles died during the London bombing.
Was Jean Charles more important and more innocent than the many innocents who died during the SP chaos ?????
You expect justice from elsewhere but dont want to provide the same justice !
That is the Brazilian FAIRNESS !
Lamentable !
Guest
Go ahead and take the side of the glue sniffing trafficantes – don´t come whining to me when a doctor is mining for a piece of lead in your head.
Guest
And That Element is the Police
Always has been. They are the shit stirrers who keep the pot of shit overflowing. And please don’t hug a thug – a government thug that is. Good old fashioned thug mob controlled politicians and dirty cops keep the cauldrons overflowing.
99% of the riff-raff you will find is in the government. That is the reason that Brazil and the US is in the shit conditions they are in today. Dirty cops and dirty mob thug assed governments!
Guest
Just what you´d expect from a backward ass country. The police are ATTACKED, and hit the streets to avenge their bretheren´s executions, and what happens? THEY are targetted and investigated by state authorities!!!!
I say free these boys up to do their jobs and clear out the riff-raff from the streets via ANY MEANS POSSIBLE and leave the lefty hug-a-thug organizations to writher and sputter in the wind. There is only ONE WAY to make the streets of Brazil safer, and that is to ELIMINATE the element on those streets posing the threats. And we´re not talking about throwing an extra 50 cents a month their way or building more basket ball hoops and community centres. It´s NOT rocket science boys and girls.