Justice denies arrest of businessmen accused of torturing employees in BA

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The Bahia Court of Justice denied the request for preventive detention of businessmen Alexandre Santos Carvalho and Diógenes Carvalho Souza, denounced on charges of the crime of torture against employees Willian de Jesus Conceição and Marcos Eduardo Serra Silva.

The two young black men were allegedly tortured for allegedly stealing merchandise and R$30 from the Salvador store. Occurred in August, the attacks were allegedly committed, filmed and publicized by the two denounced by the Public Ministry of Bahia. The videos recorded by the alleged torturers went viral on the internet.

Lawyer Otto Lopes, who represents the two defendants, defined the judge’s decision to deny the arrest as correct and courageous.

Marcos Silva appears in a video receiving blows to his hands, allegedly given by Souza on August 21. Willian Conceição would have suffered burns on his hands caused by an iron, two days after his colleague.

In one of the videos, Conceição, 24, appears half-naked, with a cloth in her mouth to muffle the screams of pain, when they receive the order to display article 171 of the Penal Code —in reference to the crime of embezzlement—engraved on her hands, in iron. hot, by the aggressors.

“They [os empregadores] accused all employees of theft. So they deducted it from our weekly pay. I didn’t steal anything,” Conceição told Sheet. “They said I was going to suffer like I was in slavery. I was afraid to die,” she said.

In the other video, Silva is forced to recount the beatings dealt by Souza, narrated by Carvalho. In the recording, the businessman claims that he put R$30 under the counter to test the employee’s honesty.

“Hey guys, another thief here. He worked for me here, we gave him morals, he gave us confidence. Then he got his hands on the money. I baited him. I told my cousin here, that I was going to catch him […] Now, he is reaping what he sowed”, says Carvalho in the video.

The decision to deny the MP’s request was taken on Friday (21) by judge José Reginaldo Costa Rodrigues Nogueira. In the judge’s assessment, to which the Sheet had access, there was no reason to apply a segregation measure to the detriment of the accused.

In the document, the judge says that, despite the arguments presented by the MP -circumstances of the criminal fact and convenience of criminal instruction-, there would be no need to decree an extreme measure of precautionary segregation of the accused.

“It appears from the file that the accused have fixed addresses, defined professions and do not have an unfavorable criminal situation, having even already constituted a lawyer”, argued the magistrate in the decision.

Nogueira scheduled an instruction and trial hearing for April 19, 2023, at 2 pm, by videoconference. “Except for technical impossibility or express and reasoned objection by the parties,” he said in the decision.

In the opinion of lawyer Otto Lopes, the seriousness of a criminal charge, by itself, is not a basis for ordering preventive detention.

“And the magistrate, after the ministerial request and the manifestation of the defense, understood that there were no grounds for the decree of arrest”, he said. “These are first-time defendants, who are collaborating with the entire procedural course.”

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