RIODE JANEIRO: Brazilian officials apologized Friday after police officers were filmed in an armed confrontation with the children of ambassadors from Canada, Gabon and Burkina Faso.
Surveillance footage from the incident Thursday night in Rio de Janeiro showed police exiting a vehicle and rushing with guns drawn toward a group of four teens.
Two of the teens are then put up against a wall and frisked before being released by police, who departed minutes later.
The minors, who live in the country’s capital Brasilia, were on vacation in Rio’s affluent Ipanema neighborhood when the confrontation occurred.
“How are you going to point guns at the heads of 13-year-old boys?” said Julie-Pascale Moudoute-Bell, the wife of the Gabonese ambassador to Brazil, in an interview with Globo television.
“Even for adults: you approach me, you ask me first, and then you tell me why you’re approaching me,” she continued.
As a result of the confrontation, Brazilian officials met with the ambassadors of Gabon and Burkina Faso on Friday to formally apologize, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The ambassador from Canada was not present for the meeting.
Brazil’s Military Police also released a statement saying the body-worn camera footage of the officers involved would be reviewed “to determine if there was excess force on the part of the authorities.”
