Items Found with Arrested Activists Are Not Explosives, Report Says

08/05/2014 - 09h03

The items found with arrested demonstrators last June 23 during a protest against the World Cup were not explosives, technical reports say. Arrested for being accused of leading violent protests, the activists are defendants being processed for conspiracy, possession of explosives and incitement of crime, among other offenses.

The objects that, according to Civil Police, were inside the backpacks of protesters Fábio Hideki Harano, 27, and Rafael Lusvarghi, 26, did not have incendiary power, according to reports from Gate (the Military Police anti-bomb team) and the Institute of Criminology (IC).

Possession of explosives - a crime that can result in a prison sentence of three to six years - is among the evidence submitted by police to justify the need to keep them imprisoned.

In a decision made on Aug. 1, Judge Marcelo Matias Pereira said that "there is consistent testimony" that indicates that "explosive/incendiary devices" were found in the hands of protesters.

Hideki and Lusvarghi deny being Black Blocs - protesters who defend the depredation of public and private property - and that they are the owners of objects that, according to police, were found in their backpacks. The report from Gate concluded that none of the objects offered any type of risk to people.

When contacted, the Secretariat of Pubic Security said "the facts are under consideration and were the subject of complaints offered by prosecutors to the judiciary, which maintained [the activists] in preventative detention (...) The complaints, which are not only based on the objects found, will become lawsuits, in which Harano and Lusvarghi are defendants."

Translated by JILL LANGLOIS