Crime

Brazilian man who participated in massacre indicted for lying on visa application, prosecutors say

Antonio Jose De Abreu Vidal Filho was a military police officer who participated in the killing and torture of multiple young people in Brazil in 2015, prosecutors said. He later fled to New England.

Antonio Jose De Abreu Vidal Filho after his arrest in New Hampshire in 2023. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

May 30, 2024

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A Brazilian man who was convicted of participating in a notorious massacre before fleeing to New England was indicted Wednesday on charges that he used a fraudulently obtained visa to enter the U.S. and also lied on his asylum application.

Antonio Jose De Abreu Vidal Filho, 30, is a former military police officer, prosecutors said. He was convicted of 11 murders and sentenced to more than 200 years in prison in June 2023 by a criminal court in Ceará, Brazil.

Last August, he was arrested in Rye, New Hampshire by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. De Abreu, who had been living in Malden, appeared in federal court in Boston this week, and is being detained pending a hearing scheduled for June 5.

De Abreu was allegedly involved in an incident on Nov. 12, 2015, that has come to be known as “The Slaughter of Curió” or “The Curió Massacre.” He and other members of the Ceará State Military Police “participated in a mass killing event of primarily young people,” acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy’s office said in a release.

The violence was said to be in retaliation for the killing of another police officer, who was shot while attempting to defend his wife from being assaulted. A total of 45 people, including De Abreu, were charged by Brazilian authorities in 2016. In addition to the 11 people that died, “many others” were tortured and seriously injured, according to Levy’s office.

Seven of the people allegedly killed by police were under the age of 18.

“I’m sure they were killed by cops … they were in about ten cars. They were wearing masks to hide their faces, and thugs here don’t do that. They were cops, and I will die saying they were cops,” the father of one of the victims said about the attackers, according to a UNICEF report on adolescent homicides in the area.

De Abreu was initially released pending trial in May 2017. Two weeks later, he applied for a U.S. non-immigrant B2 visitor visa while in Recife, Brazil.

During the application process, De Abreu lied about ever being arrested or convicted for any offense or crime. He was approved for a visa in June 2017 and used it to travel to Miami in May 2018, prosecutors said. Over the next five years, De Abreu obtained state driver’s licenses, a social security card, travel documents, and authorizations for employment, they added.

In January 2020, De Abreu applied for asylum. He allegedly lied when asked if he had ever been accused, charged, arrested, detained, interrogated or imprisoned in any country other than the U.S.

In June 2023, he was convicted of 11 counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, and four counts of physical and mental torture in the First Court of Fortaleza, Ceará. Brazilian authorities issued an arrest warrant.

While testifying under oath at an immigration hearing in February, De Abreu falsely claimed that he had never lied to immigration officials, saying that he left the information off of immigration documents because he had not yet been arrested, according to prosecutors.