Megaoperation Leaves 132 Dead in Confrontation with Red Command

According to official data, 81 alleged members of the criminal organization were arrested, 93 rifles and “huge” quantities of drugs were seized.

At a press conference, the governor of Rio de Janeiro argued that the bodies found this Wednesday were those of criminals.

“The conflict was all in the forest, I don’t believe there was anyone walking in the forest on a day of conflict. We can calmly classify it and, if there is an error, it will be negligible. The criterion that we speak calmly is that they are criminals because, in the planning, the conflict was in areas so as not to affect the population”, said Cláudio Castro.

The bodies found by family members, all men, were lined up side by side on the floor of a square in Penha, in full view of neighbors, according to information released by the local press.

On Tuesday, around 2,500 police officers carried out a mega-operation in the communities that make up the Penha and Alemão favela complexes, aimed at arresting the organization’s leaders.

In retaliation, members of the Brazilian criminal group Comando Vermelho blocked several important roads in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, partially paralyzing the city.

Non-governmental organizations and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have already criticized the brutality of the operation.

“We are horrified by the ongoing police operation in the favelas of Rio de Janeirowhich, according to reports, has already resulted in the deaths of more than 60 people, including four police officers”, wrote the OHCHR, on its official X platform account.

Around 30 human rights organizations signed a statement stating that security in Rio de Janeiro “cannot be achieved with blood” and that the operation, in addition to exposing “the failure and structural violence of the security policy”, places the city “in a state of terror”.

Comando Vermelho is mainly dedicated to drug and weapons trafficking, and its operations center is located in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where it controls some communities in the city, although it has a presence in a large part of the country, especially in the Amazon region.

The organization was born in the 1980s, when the military dictatorship concentrated common criminals and members of guerrilla groups with political and even military backgrounds in the same prisons.