By Raymond Colitt BRASILIA, April 12 (Reuters) - Police arrested 15 people on Thursday, including police officers and businessmen, suspected of participating in a death squad operation that has killed hundreds of people in northeast Brazil. Gunmen based in Caruaru city in Pernambuco state assassinated three or four people a week on average, or around 200 victims a year, federal police said in a statement. The vigilante operation had been operating for as long as five years, according to a spokesman for Pernambuco's public security secretary. The killers charged from 1,000 to 5,000 reais ($500 to $2,500) per murder. Hiring gunmen to carry out vigilante justice or to settle scores is a common practice in Brazil's cities and countryside, where laws often are not enforced due to understaffed or corrupt police forces. "Unfortunately, these extermination groups exist all over Brazil. They reflect the lack of state presence and are a blemish on our image," said Marcos Antonio da Silva Costa, a federal public prosecutor in Pernambuco. Amnesty International and other human rights groups have regularly denounced death squad activity and police brutality in Brazil and have accused the authorities and the judiciary of not acting firmly enough to halt it. "This crackdown is a step forward. The question is whether it will continue or was just a one-off show of force by an incoming state government," Costa told Reuters by telephone. The suspects in the Pernambuco group will be charged with homicide as well as drug- and gun-trafficking, the police statement said. The statement also said that policemen suspected of involvement routinely eliminated evidence at crime scenes. A public prosecutor in Pernambuco state has been denouncing a similar "extermination group" for years and receives regular death threats as a result. Brazil is the fourth-most violent country in the world, with around 30 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants each year, according to the Organization of Ibero-American States. Dozens of high-profile killings over the past year have caused public outrage and increased pressure on President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to get tough on crime. ($1=2.039 reais)
