Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared this Tuesday that the mega-operation that took place last week in Rio de Janeiro was a "massacre". He made this statement in an interview with international news agencies, as reported by CNN Brasil. According to Lula, the judge's order was to execute arrest warrants, not to carry out a massacre, yet that is what happened. The president emphasized that it is important to examine the circumstances in which it occurred. Lula also described the operation as "disastrous." "The harsh reality is that, in terms of the number of deaths, some might consider the operation a success," he added. Furthermore, Lula stated that the federal government will push for an independent investigation into the mega-police operation that resulted in 121 deaths in Rio de Janeiro last week, including four police officers. "It is important to analyze the circumstances in which it occurred," declared Lula. "We are carrying out this investigation. We are even trying to see if it is possible for federal police forensic experts to participate in the process of investigating the deaths, how they occurred, because there are many accounts, a lot of information," he argued. The so-called Operation Containment, which took place on October 28 and targeted the criminal faction CV (Comando Vermelho), was the deadliest in the history of Brazil. The authorities of Rio de Janeiro deemed the action of the security forces successful, and Governor Cláudio Castro (PL) claimed that the "only real victims" were the police officers who died, alleging that all the others who died were criminals.
