The Court of Justice of the District and Federal Territories (TJDFT) accepted the request of the Public Ministry (MPDFT) and, on Tuesday (2/12), annulled the preventive arrests of three people reported in connection with the fire that destroyed the Instituto Liberte-se Therapeutic Clinic, in Paranoa, leaving six dead and 12 injured in August this year.
The arrest of the clinic’s directors, Geraldo Ramos de Jesus Junior, Joquilan Lima de Souza and Douglas Costa de Oliveira Ramos, has been transferred to various precautionary measures. They must appear in court monthly and are prohibited from contacting any surviving victims by any means.
Douglas and his wife Jocelyn have been in pre-trial detention since September this year. The court ordered the release of the accused. Geraldo, in turn, was considered a fugitive until then.
Judge Edulio Teixeira da Silva ordered the receipt of the MPDFT complaint because he understood that it met the requirements of materiality and evidence of authorship that required evaluation in court.
On the other hand, the judge accepted to preserve the facts related to the crimes of criminal organization, ill-treatment and false imprisonment, due to the lack of just cause.
Complaint MPDFT
The three clinic directors and its controller were charged with 6 qualifying murders and 15 qualifying attempted murders. Two of them may also be responsible for procedural fraud, for allegedly introducing fire extinguishers at the scene of the crime after it occurred, with the intention of changing the scenario and misleading the judge.
According to the complaint, two directors, an administrator and an employee acted jointly, and with probable intent, by keeping the clinic’s doors and windows locked from the outside, which would have prevented the victims from escaping during the fire.
The practice of locking the house from the outside was adopted to prevent escape and theft. On the night of the incident, a staff member allegedly locked the door before going to sleep, following instructions from unit managers.
The Public Prosecution pointed out that the crime occurred without a reason, as siege operations were carried out to prevent escape and theft of things. The use of fire and also through resources made it difficult to defend the victims who were trapped inside the dwelling.
According to the complaint, in the case of the survivors, the only cause of death was failure to enter due to circumstances beyond the control of the defendants, “to the extent that third parties intervened and were able to rescue them from inside the burning house.”
Survey completed
The Civil Police of the Federal District (PCDF) has indicted five people for the fire at the Free Therapy Institute.
Forensic medicine was unable to determine the cause of the fire at Liberte-se. However, according to the chief deputy of the 6th Police, Bruno Cunha, there is strong evidence that cigarettes and a lighter found at the scene could have had an influence on the appearance of the flames. The hypothesis that the fire started from an electrical short was ignored.
Investigators also concluded that the 21 patients were locked in the burned-out farmhouse. They were drugged at the time of the fire.
According to the delegate, the prisoners are treated irregularly by the monitors. “The psychiatrist in charge of their online consultation stated that the prescriptions had an expiration date of 30 days. So, for the first 30 days, they were taking the medication in a way that was supported by the report and prescription,” he said.
The representative revealed that “the rest of the time they stayed there, they were taking it irregularly, without a prescription to justify the treatment that the observers prescribed to them.”
Six dead and 12 wounded
- In the early hours of August 31, the Núcleo Rural Boqueirão unit of the Instituto Liberte-se, in Paranoa, caught fire.
- At that time, six people were killed and 12 others were injured. Darlie Fernandez de Carvalho, José Augusto, Lindbergh Nunes Pinho, Daniel Antunes, and João Pedro Santos were burned to death. Luiz Gustavo Ferrojim Kumca, 21, died three weeks later in hospital from smoke inhalation.
- The unit operated without a licence, according to the DF Legal Secretariat.
- The owner of the Free Therapy Institute, Douglas Costa Ramos, 33 years old, confirmed in a statement to PCDF that the only entry and exit door to the clinic was closed, due to previous thefts.
- Douglas also admitted that he did not have the necessary licenses to allow the Buquerao unit to operate.
- Four people involved in the fire that broke out at the Freedom Institute Unit in Paranoa have been provisionally arrested by the PCDF, on September 18.
- The report concluded that one of the arrested owners was Douglas Costa de Oliveira Ramos, 33 years old. His wife, Joselan Lima de Souza, 37, and Matheus Luiz Nunes de Souza, 23, were also arrested. The identity of the fourth person involved has not been confirmed.
The other side
According to lawyer Delcio Gomez, who is defending the clinic’s managers, his clients should not be held responsible for the deaths, because they did not cause the fire. He claims that the police made a mistake in collecting “information from drug addicts, most of whom were in an advanced state of withdrawal.”
He stated, “The drug addict, under the influence of drugs, lies and acts outside the scope of his normal awareness. The direct perpetrators of the fire were investigated by public agents, and these public agents were deceived by those who were welcomed and were not even arrested.”
The lawyer added: “We passed all the information to the police, and they preferred to embrace their egos rather than act with the truth. The behavior of these professionals is ridiculous.”