WITNESSES KILLED IN BRAZILIAN DRUG PROBE

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 12 - At least 30 people who helped, or planned to
help, the Brazilian Congress in a nationwide drug trafficking investigation
have been killed since the probe began 14 months ago, a member of the
investigating committee said today.

The slayings are evidence of how extraordinarily difficult it has been for
the government of Latin America's largest and most populous nation to
attack a culture of lawlessness and impunity that has become deeply rooted
throughout this country of 170 million people.

The deaths almost certainly will put more pressure on the federal
government to strengthen its efforts to protect witnesses who have
testified at the congressional hearings, which touched numerous public
officials in virtually all of the nation's 26 states.

None of the people killed was in the government's witness protection
program, although they had indicated that they wanted to be, said Pompeo de
Mattos, the congressional committee member who learned of the slayings in
preparing the probe's final report. The report is to be released later this
month.

"They wanted the protection, but it didn't come on time," de Mattos said.
"Why they didn't get it is a very good question."

De Mattos said he is certain that in the coming weeks officials will learn
of others who have been killed in connection with the investigation. The
congressman said that virtually all of those slain were killed in the past
six months by various methods--shooting, stabbing, blowing up. He said the
killings occurred in four states, and many of the victims were police
officers who had participated, or had been scheduled to participate, in
congressional hearings.

At least two of those slain were killed by corrupt police officers, de
Mattos said, but the vast majority of the cases are unsolved and Congress
is pushing the federal police to step up investigations.

The congressman said those killed "were either people who were supposed to
testify, had already testified and were supposed to say more, or people who
had already said too much."

The director of the government's witness protection program, known as
Provita, confirmed that none of the victims had received protection, but
said it was not clear whether they had requested it. Gustavo Ungaro said
that none of the 170 people in the program "has been injured, much less
killed." Most of them had taken part in other government investigations.

The congressional investigation of drug trafficking was the first of its
kind in Brazil, and it became a daily feature on the national evening news.
During the hearings, hundreds of witnesses, many of them hooded or shielded
by a screen, testified about the intricacy and reach of the country's
various drug trafficking networks.

Dozens of people, including police officers and politicians, already have
been indicted. But officials said scores, perhaps hundreds, more will be
indicted after Congress releases its final report.

Among the most important catches in the investigation was a former member
of Congress, Hildebrando Pascoal accused of overseeing a drug-trafficking
and robbery network that led to hundreds of deaths and involved numerous
public officials in his home state of Acre, in western Brazil.