Lawyers say arrest of Brazilian protesters at Federal Police gym is illegal

The lawyers Samuel Magalhaes, Hellen Costa, and André Alves, hired to defend some protesters arrested after the depredations at the Esplanade of the Ministries, told Revista Oeste that the arrest of more than 1.5 thousand people in the gymnasium of the Federal Police (PF), in Brasilia, is illegal.

By this Tuesday afternoon, ten detainees had dwindled to 700.

“These people are not being detained but arrested. If they have been here since yesterday, where is the custody hearing? There isn’t one.”

They are being illegally detained. One lady got sick three times and was treated by the fire department but was not taken to the hospital.

The protesters have been at the Federal Police Academy since the morning of Monday 9th. “They arrived around 8 am but only received food at 6 pm,” denounced Magalhães.

Initially, children and older adults were also at the site. However, last night, the youngsters were taken away by guardians or the Guardianship Council.

The elderly, more than 60 years old and with comorbidities, left the site on Tuesday by bus. They headed towards the Brasilia Bus Station.

According to Magalhães, triage is taking place at the PF Academy.

The intention is to facilitate forwarding the prisoners to the Papuda prison (male) and the Beehive (female).

There are rooms where the police officers carry out individual searches, identification of the demonstrator, and hearings.

The lawyer also explains that, in the procedural phase of the arrest, it is necessary to individualize each person’s sentence.

And for this to happen, it is necessary to have proof that they have committed a crime. According to the Federal Police, the total number of people arrested so far is 727.

“Yesterday, I attended to a gentleman with heart problems, who was with an autistic son,” said the lawyer as he reported the neglect of the detainees.

“They were both in the gym without any medication. There was also a lady who was going to another city, and at the moment the bus with the protesters stopped, she asked if the vehicle was going to her destination.”

“They said yes. She came to the PF Academy and stayed here until 2 am.”

In front of the gym, many family members were still waiting for news of their loved ones but were unsuccessful.

At the time, a daughter sat on the sidewalk and began to cry desperately as she had no news of her mother.

“What Justice Alexandre de Moraes did was to ‘take’ a soccer stadium with organized fans involved in a riot and have everything closed down and everyone arrested,” said lawyer André Alves.

“But did everyone participate in the confusion? In a common prison, you can’t mix men and women, children and older adults. But everyone was together.”

In the morning, lawyer Hellen Costa accompanied some of the arrested women to the corpus delicti process at the Forensic Medical Institute.

The lawyer explains that many of them were bleeding without having access to any absorbents. Others had psychotic episodes.

“They hadn’t even been fed properly,” Hellen pointed out while affirming that she was not defending acts of vandalism.

“The coroners and the police who were accompanying us were the ones who provided the food,” said the lawyer.

“Two policemen came to talk to me. One cried, asking the OAB to take some position because those people were not criminals.”