The Rio de Janeiro Court denied the acquittal of the two Military Police agents who brutally approached a group of underage youths in Ipanema, south of the capital of Rio de Janeiro. The case happened in July this year. Of the four boys searched, three are black and sons of diplomats from Canada, Gabon and Burkina Faso, who were on a vacation trip to Rio.
In the action, caught on surveillance cameras, the police officers get out of a vehicle in a hurry, approach the young people with their weapons drawn and place them against the wall for a search.
The approach was reported to the Military Justice Audit by the 2nd Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio, which accused sergeants Luiz Felipe dos Santos Gomes and Sergio Regattieri Fernandes Marinho for the crimes of threat and illegal constraint.
The agents’ defense was not located. At the time, the Rio Military Police said that the officers involved in the action were wearing body cameras and that the images would be analyzed to check whether the agents committed any excesses. When questioned again, the entity did not respond until the publication of the report.
In the order, issued on the 5th, judge Guilherme Schilling Pollo Duarte decided to maintain the complaint made by the Prosecutor’s Office and denied acquitting the police officers. The judge understood that the approach adopted by the sergeants does not exclude illegality – when illegal conduct is not treated as a crime.
“I verify that this is not the case for summary acquittal (…) considering that the presence of causes that exclude the illegality of the fact or the guilt of the accused cannot be seen, just as punishability is not extinguished, and it is certain that, in theory , the facts narrated in the complaint constitute a crime”, states the magistrate. “In this scenario, I cease to summarily acquit the accused Sergio and Luiz Felipe and ratify the decision to receive the complaint.”
Complaint
In the accusatory piece, prosecutor Paulo Roberto Mello Cunha Júnior highlights that the accused Regattieri carried out security at the location, while Luiz Felipe searched the teenagers in a way that forced them to display their genitals.
Cunha Júnior also alleges that one of the agents told the victims to be alert, because of other teenagers who were carrying out robberies in the surrounding area. “They should not leave the house at this time and that, in the next search, it could be worse”, highlights an excerpt from the complaint.
The young black men are the children of the Gabon ambassador and diplomats from Burkina Faso and Canada. The white teenager is the grandson of journalist Ricardo Noblat – on a social network, he said that the boys, who are friends and live in Brasília, were playing football in a neighborhood square moments before the approach.
The episode prompted a formal apology from Itamaraty to the ambassadors of Gabon, Burkina Faso and Canada.
(With information from Agência Brasil)
This content was originally published in Justice refuses to acquit police officers who approached diplomats’ children in Ipanema on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
