RIO DE JANEIRO — The Brazilian branch of Human Rights Watch said Monday that police might have used sharpshooters to kill at least two men in a Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood, and called for an independent and thorough investigation.
The group also said another man was shot in similar circumstance earlier but survived. The 22-year-old bricklayer claims the shot that nearly killed him came from a nearby police tower, and several witnesses corroborated that, Human Rights Watch said.
The report comes as the new governor of Rio de Janeiro state is promising to crack down on crime, one of the state’s biggest problems. Gov. Wilson Witzel floated several ideas during his election campaign and since taking office Jan. 1, including using sharpshooters during police operations with authority to kill armed drug traffickers.
Witzel, whose discussion of public security matters is often in line with the hard line taken by President Jair Bolsonaro, called drug traffickers “narco-terrorists” in his swearing-in speech, saying they would “be treated like terrorists.”
“Armed criminals have taken over and dominated portions of our territory, causing disgrace and disorder. I will not allow this ‘parallel power’ to continue,” Witzel said in the speech.
Human Rights Watch said the shootings took place in the Manguinhos shantytown, at a square less than 300 metres (yards) from the city’s main police complex.
“When Human Rights Watch visited the site on Feb. 4, a hot dog tent in the square, in the tower’s line of sight, had two holes that appeared to be from bullets,” the group’s statement read.
The report said the state prosecutor’s office had confirmed that the incident was being looked into by a special task force, whose members visited the tower and concluded it would possible for a sniper lying down on the building’s roof to shoot someone on the square where the men were killed.
Police officials and the state prosecutor’s office were not immediately available to comment, but Brazilian news media said authorities started investigating the claim Feb. 14.