They slit my son’s throat, says mother of teen killed in Rio police raid

RIO DE JANEIRO – The head, its hair dyed red, was severed from the body and found in dense vegetation near a Rio favela, some 24 hours after Brazil’s deadliest-ever police operation.

It belonged to 19-year-old Iago Ravel. His mother has no doubt her son was executed by Brazil’s security forces.

“They slit my son’s throat, cut his neck, and hung the head from a tree like a trophy,” Ms Raquel Tomas told AFP through grief and anger.

“They executed my son without giving him a chance to defend himself. He was murdered,” she said, her voice shaking.

At least 119 people – 115 alleged gang members and four police officers – were killed on Oct 28 in the largest police operation Rio de Janeiro has seen in its recent troubled past.

Some officials put the toll as high as 132 and many relatives are still looking for loved ones.

Police say the raids involving 2,500 security personnel targeted Comando Vermelho – the Red Command – Rio’s main criminal group and a significant player in South America’s cocaine trade.

Hard-right Rio Governor Claudio Castro insisted that those killed were criminals and that minimal mistakes were made during the operation.

Mr Ravel’s family is not buying it.

His 34-year-old mother spent the night searching hospitals and police stations for her son.

She finally found her son’s remains among a pile of bodies lined up in a square in the Penha favela complex.

An AFP journalist saw the decapitated body.

“He was only 19, a boy from a good family,” Ms Tomas said as she waited outside a morgue to formally identify her son’s remains.

Mr Ravel’s aunt, Ms Dayane Tomas, 36, added: “Our greatest sadness, our greatest outrage, is the way they killed him.”

‘It was a massacre’

Mr Ravel’s father, Mr Alex Rosado da Costa, accused the Special Police Operations Battalion, known locally as Bope, of executing his son.

Bope is notorious for its skull and dagger insignia and past abuses, for which several of its officers have been tried and convicted.

“They tore off his head. From what I’ve been told, there are no bullet wounds on the body,” he said.

Ms Raquel Tomas described the last 24 hours as pure “terror”.

“They murdered him,” she said. “It wasn’t just my son, it was a massacre.

“Everyone deserves a second chance. During an operation, police should do their job, arrest suspects, but not execute them.”

Outside the morgue, Ms Ana Beatriz Adorno, 24, was still searching for her 29-year-old husband.

“We don’t know where he is. We have no body, no information, nothing,” she told AFP.

Two other women were also looking for their husbands.

‘Narco-terrorists’

The bloody clashes began early on Oct 28 in Rio’s Penha and Alemao neighborhoods.

Under the codename Operation Containment, thousands of heavily armed police were deployed reportedly with the aim of executing some 100 judicial warrants.

They quickly faced hostilities, with suspected gang members deploying bomb-laden drones and building barricades.

The operation was unusually brutal, even by Rio’s standards, and the gunfire intense.

Journalists on the ground had to take cover repeatedly, an AFP photographer recalled.

Later, 26 or 27 detainees, shirtless and barefoot, lined up on the ground with heads bowed.

Governor Castro, a close ally of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, called the raid against “narco-terrorists” a success.

UN human rights officials said they were “horrified” and demanded a swift investigation. AFP