The governor of Rio de Janeiro, the extreme right-wing leader of the drug-ridden city of Rio de Janeiro, has warned drug gangs in his city of Hezbollah, warning that the police would respond in the same way as Israel by showing no leniency with "terrorists" "He said.
Defending his tough security strategy, which has increased police killings, Witzel said criminals in slums in Rio de Janeiro "raped children and killed innocent people and used them to sell drugs."
"What are they doing and different from Hezbollah? Nothing," Witzel said during a rare meeting with foreign journalists.
"Will we be tolerant of Hezbollah when it uses rockets and bombs against the people of Israel?"
"What Israel is doing in Rio de Janeiro will not tolerate anyone carrying a weapon," he said, adding: "You do not want to die? Well, do not go to the street with a gun."
Witzel, the former federal judge, is re-elected governor of Rio de Janeiro because of his support for tough policies against the crime of right-wing extremist leader Javier Paulsonaro.
Since he took office, police killings of suspects have risen sharply, with 731 people killed in "police interventions" in the first five months this year, up 19.1 percent from the same period in 2018, according to the latest official data.
Wetzell had previously angered human rights activists over his call for the use of "rockets" to target criminals in slums and praised the deployment of snipers from the police to root out suspects from long distances.
It sparked controversy in May after a video of Twitter was posted to itself in a police helicopter firing at a random neighborhood.
But Wetzel accused the media Tuesday of bias in transferring the incident in particular, and of transferring police operations against gangs in general.
"If we take the Second World War as an example, it would be like ignoring the Nazis and looking only at Britain, which is bombing Dresden and Berlin," he said.
