Police rescue 50 people trapped in an underground clinic. They were beaten, tortured and starved.

The civil police (Judiciária) of the Brazilian city of Anapolis in the state of Goias released 50 people who were held captive in an underground clinic and were beaten, tortured and almost completely deprived of food. The clandestine clinic is owned by a pair of evangelical pastors who were arrested on the spot, as were four employees.

All 50 released people are men aged 14 to 96. Among the rescued are people with mental disabilities, physical disabilities and drug addicts.

According to the delegate (inspector) Manuel Vanderik, who led the liberation action, all the internees were brought there by force, either by families or by the pastors who owned the institution, who run an evangelical temple in the city. . Vanderik detailed that the situation that the agents found when they invaded the place was shocking: the prisoners were in a severe state of exhaustion due to lack of food, were dirty, and some had serious injuries on their bodies as a result of aggression and torture. to which they were subjected. To.

Reports from some of those released say that pastors and officials kept people locked in cells without any health benefits, without any contact with the outside world, and many of them were tied up all the time. Those who complained were beaten and tortured, while others lived in a permanent state of mental breakdown due to the powerful drugs they were forced to take.

The clinic, which operated in a remote area of ​​the Anapolis countryside, was discovered after a 96-year-old man hospitalized in an illegal establishment was left in the city hospital with injuries all over his body and told where he was. he suffered abuse. The clinic was a significant source of profit for the pastor couple, as each prisoner’s family paid at least one national minimum wage to the organization to keep a family member from being away from it.