BRAZIL’S ARMY has suspended 30 soldiers accused of looting in a Rio de Janeiro slum they occupied last November after chasing out the drug traffickers who previously controlled it.
The move follows dozens of complaints of abuses committed by police officers against local residents, complicating the government’s attempts to return to state control large swathes of Brazil’s second city which for decades have been run by heavily armed drug gangs.
More serious accusations were denounced to the United Nations by local human rights groups who documented cases of illegal entry, extortion, intimidation, illegal detention and threats of torture and death by police officers against shanty town or favela residents.
Twenty-three police officers are already suspended while under investigation for crimes against residents, but this is the first accusation against soldiers. They make up the overwhelming majority of the 2,000-man force patrolling a string of favelas in the north of the city that the state reoccupied after a violent stand-off with gangs.
The 30 soldiers all came from the elite parachute regiment. They were suspended after their patrol was accused of looting an empty house in the Fazendinha favela, which makes up part of the Complexo do Alemão, one of the city’s biggest slum areas.
According to soldiers who reported the incident to military authorities, the patrol’s lieutenant took an air-conditioning unit while men under his command stole other items from the house.
The army was sent into the Complexo do Alemão in November after the gang which controlled it and the neighbouring Vila Cruzeiro favela unleashed a wave of violence across the city in an attempt to force the state to halt its policy of retaking control of gang-dominated slums and then building police stations in them.
Residents in the complex have welcomed an end to the rule of young gang members who frequently turned the area into war zones as they battled the police and rival gangs.
However, there have been 55 recorded complaints against the police which accompanied the military into the retaken favelas. Most of the accusations involve theft of property. In one case, police officers are accused of taking more than €13,000 from an evangelical preacher in Vila Cruzeiro.
In the days immediately after the favelas were occupied by the authorities, soldiers discovered tonnes of drugs and huge quantities of money abandoned by traffickers, who melted into the population before the army-led assault.
The police, though, turned over noticeably less contraband amid accusations that corrupt officers were keeping money for themselves or else helping gang members to escape the military cordon.
Rio’s police force has a long history of collusion with drug traffickers, selling them weapons and protection in return for a share of the profits from the cocaine trade.
In other parts of the city, officers have formed illegal private militias which have chased gangs out of neighbourhoods, only to take over for themselves protection and drug rackets.
Brazil’s own army admits that despite its heavy presence in the favelas, drug trafficking has returned, with cocaine again being sold and several gang murders reported.