An operation to capture drug traffickers from a powerful criminal group left at least 21 dead on Tuesday in a favela complex in Rio de Janeiro, a year after the city’s deadliest police action killed 28 people.
La Penha, in the north of Rio, woke up to the sound of gunshots, after Military Police agents entered the gigantic Rio favela complex in search of leaders of the Comando Vermelho criminal group, one of the most important of Brazil together with the First Command of the Capital (PCC).
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According to the Police, the agents were shot at by the criminals during an incursion that left at least 13 fatalities, including 11 allegedly suspicious civilians, a resident of this region of poor neighborhoods and another person of whom there are no details.
Subsequently, hospital sources raised the number of deceased, up to 21, although some of them have not yet been identified.
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The victims were taken to a hospital in the area, where relatives went to identify the bodies already lifeless.
The objective of the operation, according to the authorities, is to try to dismantle the Comando Vermelho, a faction “with an ideology of war” and that is “responsible for more than 80% of the armed confrontations” in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
“It has an expansionist policy, an ideology of war, of confrontation. Not only against the police forces, but also against other criminal groups,” said the spokesman for the Military Police, Ivan Blaz.
According to Blaz, the Comando Vermelho has begun to protect drug traffickers from other states who “give orders” from Rio de Janeiro “to commit homicides in other regions” of the country and who are allegedly hiding in Vila Cruzeiro, within the Complex of the Penha.
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Vila Cruzeiro was one of the favelas in Rio occupied at the end of 2010 by the Brazilian Army in a major operation to expel drug trafficking, but the groups have gradually regained control of the region.
During the operation, which included armored vehicles, a “war arsenal” was seized consisting of pistols, 10 grenades and at least 13 rifles from China and Eastern Europe that arrived in Brazil through international arms trafficking, as well as vehicles and motorcycles.
“These are weapons that can kill people at long range,” Blaz stressed.
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This happened with Gabriele Ferreira de Cunha, 41 years old and a resident of the area, who was walking in the lower part of the favela when she was hit by a stray bullet.
“It was the loss of an innocent life. We are not going to have a great success in an operation as long as we have deaths of an innocent (…) Unfortunately, it is necessary for us to carry out operations like that,” the spokesman justified.
Tuesday’s operation comes a year after a similar operation left 28 dead in the Jacarezinho favela, including 27 civilian suspects and 1 agent, in what was the deadliest police action in Rio’s history.
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Human rights organizations denounced that during the operation in Jacarezinho, described as a “massacre”, there were cases of extrajudicial executions, abuses against detainees and destruction of evidence by the police.
In a first reaction after the shooting on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for an “immediate and exhaustive” investigation of the events and denounced that the inhabitants of the neighborhood “spent hours terrified.”
“Rio urgently needs a new public security policy other than the bullet,” added HRW.
EFE
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