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Brazilian court annuls police sentencings in prison bloodbath
© AFP/File Mauricio Lima
Sao Paulo (AFP) - A Sao Paulo court has thrown out convictions of police in the deaths of 111 prisoners during the suppression of a 1992 prison riot, drawing condemnation from rights groups Wednesday.
Judge Camilo Lellis, at the 4th Court in Brazil's biggest city, ruled that the evidence was not strong enough to convict the 74 officers who put down the bloody riot at Carandiru penitentiary, which was then Latin America's biggest prison.
"There was a confrontation and I believe excesses were committed but it has to be checked who committed them and who shot at whom. The evidence was not conclusive and was unconvincing," Lellis said in the ruling put up on the court's website late Tuesday.
The local prosecutor's office said it was "perplexed" by the ruling and would appeal.
Amnesty International called the judge's decision "a shocking blow."
"The fact that 111 prisoners can be killed without anybody being held responsible after 24 years is not only shocking, but sends a terrifying message about the state of human rights in Brazil," said Amnesty's Brazil director Atila Roque.
The 74 police officers were convicted of having executed prisoners in cold blood while their defense argued that they had only fought back during a violent uprising.
No police were injured during the operation to take back Carandiru, which was razed in 2002 and replaced by a park and a library.
The trials of most of the police officers took place in 2013 and 2014, more than two decades after the incident, which was the worst loss of life in the history of Brazilian prisons.
They received sentences of between 48 and 624 years in prison. However, none of the officers in the case have begun to serve their sentences.
The leader of the operation, Colonel Ubiratan Guimaraes, was sentenced to 632 years in prison in 2001, but was acquitted on appeal in 2006. He was murdered that same year in circumstances that remain murky.
Marcos Fuchs, director of the rights group Conectas, told AFP that the ruling opened the door to more police violence inside prisons.
"It sets a precedent for police to go into prisons and carry out the same atrocities," he said.
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