The São Paulo state attorney general said that a presidential pardon granted by Jair Bolsonaro to police officers convicted for Brazil’s worst prison massacre is unconstitutional. He claims the decision violates the country’s international commitments to human rights.
For decades, Brazilian presidents have carried a tradition of issuing bulk presidential pardons on Christmas. On many occasions, these pardons were met with criticism for benefiting politicians. In Mr. Bolsonaro’s case, controversy was raised for a different reason.
Last Friday, President Bolsonaro issued a presidential pardon to several police officers. One article of the decree was tailor-made for the agents who carried out the Carandiru massacre in 1992, the deadliest case of prison violence in Brazil’s recent history.
In October 1992, inmates at the Carandiru prison in São Paulo staged a riot that was brutally quelled by law enforcement, with 111 men killed in just 30 minutes. The officers claimed self-defense, but the murdered men were unarmed and several had bullet wounds in the back of their heads, a clear sign of execution.
The massacre was fundamental to the creation of the First Capital Command (PCC) criminal organization in a São Paulo prison one year later. The PCC has grown to become what the U.S. government has described as “the most powerful organized crime group in Brazil and among the most powerful in the world.”
Last month, Supreme Court Justice Luís Roberto Barroso ruled as final and unappealable two decisions related to the convictions of the officers who carried out the massacre. The ruling means that the case will receive no further decisions at the Supreme Court level. It is still up to lower courts to decide on the duration of the sentences.
Before Mr. Bolsonaro’s decree, his allies in Congress tried a different route to achieve impunity for the 74 convicted officers. In August, the lower house’s Public Security Committee approved a bill granting their amnesty. The bill did not proceed further and failed to reach the Senate.
The massacre was authorized by then-Governor Luiz Antônio Fleury Filho. One of the few to speak in favor of Mr. Fleury’s decision at the time was Jair Bolsonaro, a Congress backbencher. In a 2019 interview, Mr. Fleury said he was “grateful” to Mr. Bolsonaro for the support. Mr. Fleury died last month at the age of 73. He was never prosecuted for the massacre.
São Paulo Attorney General Mário Luiz Sarrubbo wrote in a petition on Friday to Prosecutor General Augusto Aras that Mr. Bolsonaro’s pardon is illegal because the president cannot pardon without being provoked to do so.
Furthermore, a 2000 report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recommended Brazil identify and prosecute the authorities responsible for the Carandiru massacre. “The presidential act is offensive to human dignity and to the most basic and common principles of public international law,” Mr. Sarrubbo wrote.
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