RIO DE JANEIRO, May 27 — Bodies from a Rio de Janeiro police raid that left more than 20 alleged drug traffickers dead show signs of torture and summary execution, a senior lawyer said on Thursday, the latest incident of suspected police brutality to shock the South American nation.
“We saw one body with a white powder that looked like cocaine covering its face,” he told AFP. “Whoever killed this person smeared it all over his face and may have forced him to eat it. It’s an act of torture.”“Witnesses have told us men who had surrendered to the police were then shot in the woods” above the hillside slum, he added.The operation left at least 26 people dead, including a hairdresser hit by a stray bullet, according to the latest toll from health authorities.
It was the second-deadliest such raid in Rio history, after another in May 2021 that left 28 people dead — 27 alleged drug traffickers and one policeman — in the slum of Jacarezinho. “His message to police was clear: You can continue killing with impunity,” said the US-based rights group in a statement on Thursday.In the northeastern town of Umbauba, a man suffocated to death on Wednesday after being placed inside a police car trunk from which thick smoke was billowing.
Thick white smoke, which appears to be from a tear gas canister, billows out of the trunk as the man cries out in pain.The man is seen moving his legs for about a minute, and then goes motionless. The officers bend his legs and close the trunk.