BRAZIL: Jubilant campaigners set off fireworks outside a Rio courthouse after a policeman was sentenced to 543 years in prison for his role in one of the most violent chapters of recent Brazilian history.
Following a three-day trial, Jorge Carvalho (32) was found guilty of taking part in the murder of 29 innocent people - among them seven teenagers.
He was the first policeman to be tried for the so-called Baixada Massacre, on March 31st last year, when military policemen went on the rampage across the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, supposedly because of an internal dispute within the police.
The Baixada Fluminense, an impoverished region on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, is a notoriously lawless area. Death squads are a daily reality, either in the form of corrupt policemen who are paid to kill, or vigilantes.
According to a recent government study the area has some of the highest murder rates in Brazil.
Katia Patricia da Silva lost two relatives in the massacre. She was going home on the bus when she first noticed something was wrong. Crowds were gathered in the street near her home and her cousin's wife was weeping hysterically, alongside five bloodied corpses.
"At first I thought it must have been some kind of car accident," said Ms Da Silva, whose 15-year-old brother and cousin were both gunned down. "I still can't understand it. No matter how much they explain in court it doesn't make any sense."
Activists celebrated the verdict as a victory over a culture of silence that means the majority of human rights abuses go unpunished. Death squads, however, are a cultural legacy of state neglect, they said, and will not cease to exist overnight.
"The existence of extermination groups is in a way socially acceptable," said Mauricio Campos, of Rio's Community Anti-Violence Network.
With another four policemen facing trial in the next two months for the massacre, Ms da Silva said she was praying for similar verdicts. "If even one of these men is cleared it will all happen again," she said. "These aren't people, they are monsters."