2023-06-13 17:53:00
The hearings had barely begun when Judge Raynes Viana de Vasconcelos, of the 1st Criminal Execution Court of Fortaleza, Ceará, informed the officials that he would suspend the day’s agenda to verify the information provided by a prisoner during his statement.
The magistrate went to a prison in the city of Itaitinga, where 72 prisoners had been beaten the night before by prison officers. Some had broken fingers.
“It was a scene of terror. The young people are all broken, wounded. Scandalous torture,” said public defender Delano Benevides de Medeiros Filho, who was the first to locate the wounded.
The complaints filed by the Ceará authorities in September 2022 confirmed the suspicions that have haunted the state prison system for years, pointing to a possible routine of violence against inmates, which includes a specific technique to break fingers. This does not happen only in Ceará.
According to Bárbara Suelen Coloniese, an expert from the National Mechanism to Prevent and Combat Torture, it has also been identified in Rio Grande do Norte, Roraima, Amazonas and Pará.
The Ceará Penitentiary Administration Secretariat reported that it “repudiates any act that violates human dignity.
Translated by AZAHARA MARTIN ORTEGA
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