By Margaret Janelle R. Hutchinson
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BRASÍLIA, Brazil – Upwards of 250 military police, backed by armored vehicles, descended on the Chatuba favela (shanty-town), located in the town of Mesquita, north of Rio de Janiero, early this morning.

The crackdown came in the wake of the gruesome discovery, Monday, of the bodies of six youths left on a street in the vicinity of Chatuba.  Police report that the boys, ages 16 to 19, had been tortured, stabbed and shot before being left naked in the road, only covered by bed-sheets.

Police blame drug traffickers, who dominate the Chatuba favela, for the deaths of the boys. The traffickers are also suspected of being behind the murders of a police cadet and an evangelical minister on Saturday, as well as the disappearance of the minister’s companion.

No shots were fired and officers launched a search for the members of the gang suspected of being behind the weekend’s violence.

Luis Ferreira de Oliveira, a suspected drug trafficker, was arrested and officers found drugs and 15,000 reais (about $7,500) at his residence, the Rio de Janeiro Public Safety Secretariat said.

The slain young men, who did not have criminal records, were heading to a waterfall near their homes and never made it there.  Their families reported them missing on Sunday.

Investigators suspect that the gang from Chatuba may have murdered the teenagers because they came from a neighborhood where a rival gang operates.

“They were tortured. It was a barbaric crime. I think that the criminals killed them in that manner to show how powerful they are,” Sandra Ornelas, a police officer in the neighboring town of Nilopolis, told reporters on Monday.

Police and the army have occupied many of Rio’s biggest favelas as part of a “pacification program” ahead of the 2014 football World Cup and the Olympics.

The authorities say their “pacification program” has managed to reduce violence and restore the dignity of hundreds of thousands of people who live in the city’s poorer quarters.

But in many cases the drug lords have moved from the wealthier central areas of the city to the outskirts, where violence was already rife.

A permanent force of 112 militarized police officers will eventually set up a permanent post in the Chatuba favela, like in other slums in Rio.

Some 5,500 police officers have been deployed in 144 Rio favelas so far.

The next level in the crackdown on favela crime may involve the use of drones to monitor criminal activity.

Reports indicate that the Brazilian government recently started testing the drones, which were manufactured using Israeli technology.  Drones could be used to support security forces operations in favelas controlled by drug gangs.

The “VANTS,” the Portuguese acronym for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), would “see what soldiers can’t see,” according to Montenegro Magalhaes Neto, from the Military’s Engineering Institute.

For more information, please see:

 iol news – Brazil slum stormed after bodies found – 12 September 2012

BBC News – Rio police occupy slum in hunt for teenagers’ killers – 11 September 2012

Fox News Latino – Brazilian police occupy shantytown after massacre – 11 September 2012

In Sight Crime – Brazil Tests Drones to Monitor Rio Favelas – 11 September 2012

Merco Press – Rio police begins to use drones to control drugs and crime in the city’s shanty towns – 10 September 2012

inforsur hoy – Six missing youths found dead in Brazilian slum – 9 September 2012