Brazil’s Infamous Prison Massacre Stirs Controversy 24 Years Later
Judges throw out convictions of 74 military police previously sentenced for murdering 111 inmates
By LUCIANA MAGALHAES and JEFFREY T. LEWIS - Wall Street Journal
Oct. 4, 2016
SÃO PAULO—Fernanda Vicentina da Silva still vividly remembers standing in line as a nine-year-old with her brother and an aunt at São Paulo’s notorious Carandiru Penitentiary to see her father, Antonio Quirino da Silva, when a guard told them there would be no inmate visits that day, Oct. 2, 1992.
Later that day they learned it had been the last day of her father’s life. Mr. da Silva was one of 111 inmates killed when heavily armed military police stormed Latin America’s largest prison compound to put down a riot that had broken out that morning. Photographs and medical testimony subsequently revealed that many inmates were shot multiple times at close range.
Last week, the so-called Carandiru Massacre sparked controversy again when a judicial panel threw out the convictions of 74 military police previously sentenced for murdering the inmates, on grounds of insufficient evidence.
“There was no massacre,” said Ivan Sartori, one of three judges on a judicial panel who ruled in favor of annulling the charges against the military police. Mr. Sartori said the police collectively had been acting in self-defense that day. The panel concluded there wasn’t sufficient ballistic evidence to link any individual police officer with the shooting of any particular inmate at Carandiru. São Paulo state prosecutors said they plan to appeal the ruling.
Crosses are seen in front of the School of Law of the University of Sao Paulo in homage to the inmates dead at the Carandiru Penitentiary massacre, in April 2013.
The judges now must decide whether to convene a new trial for the 74 officers previously convicted of murder in five separate jury trials. The judges could also formally absolve the men, putting an end to a legal battle that has dragged on for 24 years. Sentenced to prison terms ranging from 48 years to 624 years, all 74 of the men convicted at the trials have remained free as the judicial process grinds on.
Many Brazilians were shocked by last week’s ruling in a case that has remained a topic of films, books and songs. Ms. da Silva, now 33 and struggling to make ends meet with her family in the crime-ridden São Paulo suburb of Diadema, called the ruling an injustice and said she is seeking compensation from the government for her father’s death.
The Sept. 27 decision has also reignited concerns about police brutality in a country with one of the highest levels of killings by police in the world. “This sends the message that there’s no hope of justice,” said São Paulo prosecutor Sandra Jardim.
Prison and government officials have long argued that the lethal methods deployed by police at Carandiru were necessary to defend themselves and restore order at the lockup, which at one time housed more than 8,000 inmates.
The incident became a major international embarrassment for Brazil at a time when the country was eager to show it had transitioned to democracy following a two-decade military dictatorship that ended in 1985.
Killings by police remain a major problem in Brazil. In São Paulo state alone, military police killed 750 people in what the state security secretariat classifies as “justifiable homicides” in 2015. Violent deaths at the hands of police represented more than 5% of the roughly 55,000 violent deaths in Brazil in 2014, according to the Forum for Public Safety, a nonprofit group that promotes better policing.
Ms. Jardim, the prosecutor, said the decision to overturn the verdicts of five separate jury trials violates Brazil’s constitution. The dearth of ballistic evidence is part of a police coverup, she said, that included a police effort to scrub the site and remove evidence, including bullets.
“The police had to clean up the scene of the crime,” Ms. Jardim said.
Police destruction of evidence extended to legal documents, according to Ms. da Silva’s lawyer, Carlos Alexandre Klomfahs. To this day, Ms. da Silva said she and her lawyer haven’t been able to find out why her father was in Carandiru in the first place.
A lawyer for 25 of the policemen denied any destruction or removal of documents or other evidence.
Carandiru Penitentiary was demolished more than a decade ago, and a public park has been put on its former site.