The governor of Rio state said that the massive police operation involving around 2,500 security personnel was aimed at stopping a criminal group known as Comando Vermelho (Red Command) from expanding its territory.<\/p>\n
Initially, the Rio state government maintained that “60 suspects and four police officers” had been killed in the operation.<\/p>\n
They have since said that their “preliminary” count shows that 117 “suspects” have been killed.<\/p>\n
Rio’s public defender’s office, which provides legal assistance to the poor, has put the total number of people killed at 132.<\/p>\n
According to researchers, Red Command is the only criminal group which in recent years has managed to make territorial gains in the state of Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n
It is widely considered one of the two largest gangs in the country, alongside First Capital Command (PCC), and has a history dating back more than 50 years. <\/p>\n
According to Brazilian journalist Rafael Soares, who has been covering crime in Rio for years, Red Command “operates like a franchise” with local criminal leaders forming part of the gang and becoming “business partners”.<\/p>\n
The gang engages primarily in drug trafficking, but also smuggles guns, gold, fuel, alcohol and tobacco.<\/p>\n
According to the authorities, gang members are well armed and police said that during the raid, they came under attack from explosive-laden drones. <\/p>\n
The governor of Rio state, Cl\u00e1udio Castro, described Red Command members as “narcoterrorists” and called the four police officers killed in the raid “heroes”.<\/p>\n
But the number of people killed in the operation has come in for criticism with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights saying it was “horrified”.<\/p>\n
At a news conference on Wednesday, Governor Castro defended the police force.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t our intention to kill anyone. We wanted to arrest them all alive,” he said.<\/p>\n
He added that the situation had escalated because the suspects had retaliated: “It was a consequence of the retaliation they carried out and the disproportionate use of force by those criminals.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The governor of Rio state said that the massive police operation involving around 2,500 security personnel was aimed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-538277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115464843007329412","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}