Seven teenagers killed in detention centre violence

Seven teenagers were beaten to death and five others were injured in a rebellion at a juvenile detention centre in southern Brazil, police and witnesses said today.

The seven were killed in a settling of scores between rivals at the Sao Francisco Education Centre in Piraquara, around 420 miles south west of Rio, according to a police officer.

The Rev Roque Zimmerman, the Parana labour and social welfare minister, was summoned to help end the uprising and confirmed the violence was between inmates.

“It wasn’t the police. It was a massacre by companions. They shouted, ‘Traitors have to die’,” he said by telephone.

The rebellion began late yesterday, when some 160 inmates broke windows, trashed the centre and set fire to mattresses to demand better conditions, the government news agency Agencia Brasil reported.

Firefighters put out the blaze and found the bodies of four teenagers who had been beaten to death, the agency said. A police search turned up three more bodies.

Television footage showed the destroyed centre and recorded the screams and threats of clashing inmates. “Don’t come in. I’m dying,” shouted one youth.

Some inmates ripped iron bars from the walls, bludgeoned their enemies and laid waste to the centre, Rev Zimmerman said.

“They all are strong and well fed. When they decide to rise up, nobody controls them,” he said. “That place is too fragile to withstand a rebellion.”

The cause of the uprising was a mystery, he said.

“It wasn’t your classic rebellion. I talked to 60, and they had no demands. They talked generically of ‘poor treatment’, but they don’t say by whom.”

The centre held 237 youths in three wings – slightly over capacity but not blatantly overcrowded by Brazilian standards.

“It wasn’t exaggerated, and we’ve been reducing the number gradually,” Rev Zimmerman said.

The youth centre is the showpiece of the Piraquara prison complex, the largest in Parana state with 169 cells. But the adult prison has had problems – in 2001, inmates killed a guard and took 21 others hostage to demand the transfer of their leaders.