TEN POLICEMEN are under arrest in Brazil after a graphic video emerged that appears to show officers taunting two young men seriously wounded during an attempted robbery in São Paulo.
One of the men later died and human rights campaigners say the incident highlights once again the brutality within the ranks of São Paulo’s military police, Brazil’s biggest force.
The footage was obtained by the Folha de S.Paulonewspaper and shows the two men lying on a road by a car with the sound of police radios in the background.
One of the men is barely conscious, foaming heavily at the mouth and his top is soaked in blood. As the camera focuses in on him someone can be heard telling him: “Suffer you son of a whore, go on, suffer. That’s it.”
There is no sign of the man, later identified as 21-year-old Tiago Silva de Oliveira, receiving any medical attention during the minute-long clip. Shot in the head, he died three days later in hospital.
The second man, 16-year-old Diego Arruda Ramos, survived despite being shot six times. In the video he is bleeding but is handcuffed and fully conscious.
As the camera moves to him, the voice can then be heard asking: “Why hasn’t this one died yet?” Someone else answers: “He was lucky.” As the camera zooms in on the clearly terrified Ramos he tries to turn his head away as the first voice tells him: “Hopefully you’ll die on the way.”
The video was recorded in May 2008 after the two men had stolen €225, two mobile phones and a cheque book from a factory in the poor neighbourhood of São Rafael. As the men made their escape they were confronted by an officer from the city’s police force who shot and wounded both men.
Units from São Paulo state’s feared military police force were then sent to the scene. It is officers from this force who are believed to have insulted the men and who are now under arrest.
Tracked down by the newspaper, Mr Ramos said police humiliated them for 40 minutes as they lay bleeding on the road: “Some of the officers stepped on my face. And they laughed without stopping.”
He said he would not be able to identify the police involved and lives in fear of being murdered by officers since the video emerged.
A spokesperson for São Paulo’s military police claimed: “Officers attended to the wounded . . . there was no failure to provide [medical] attention.” The spokesperson was unable to say how long it was before the officers got the men professional medical attention.
But as the video caused an outcry among human rights campaigners São Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin admitted the video “shows a criminal act” and said guilty officers would be “severely punished”.
In the first six months of this year, military police officers in São Paulo state shot dead 241 people while on duty, for the loss of just nine officers. The cases are registered as “resistance followed by death” a description human rights groups say death squads operating within the force use to cover up summary executions.
“There exist bandas podres [rotten groups] in the force that often act as death squads,” says Nelso Stepanha of the Santo Dias human rights centre in São Paulo.
“We already had indications that there was a death squad operating in São Rafael. In these poor neighbourhoods the police operate with impunity. If residents make a complaint against the police they are threatened. They do not have a voice.”