SAO PAULO, (Reuters) – A Brazilian court has sentenced 15 police officers to 48 years in prison each for their roles in the deaths of four inmates in the bloody crackdown of a 1992 prison riot that left 111 people dead.
Known as the Carandiru massacre after the now-closed prison where it unfolded, the incident is one of the darkest chapters in Brazil’s struggle to improve conditions in overcrowded penitentiaries and to ensure police obey the law.
The sentences, handed down late Wednesday by a state court in Sao Paulo, were the latest stage in legal proceedings that have been mired by more than two decades of controversy, bureaucracy and other delays.
A first round of sentences was handed down a year ago, and a total of 73 officers were sentenced to varying jail terms in four stages of trials. None of the officers has yet gone to prison and all are expected to appeal.
“With this decision comes an end to the trying of one of the most complex cases in history,” the Sao Paulo court said in a statement on Thursday.
President Dilma Rousseff, who was jailed in the early 1970s for fighting against the country’s military dictatorship, hailed the sentences as a sign that Brazil was working to end impunity for human rights abuses.
