SAO PAULO: Twenty-six military police officers were due to go on trial here Monday for their role in Brazil's worst prison tragedy that claimed the lives of 111 inmates.
The officers are specifically blamed for the deaths of 15 prisoners, who died in pavilion 9 of Sao Paulo's Carandiru penitentiary during an operation to quell a revolt on October 2, 1992. The incident became known as the "Carandiru massacre."
"Clearly there was a massacre, an execution. The inmates were killed without an opportunity to defend themselves," the G1 website quoted Fernando Pereira da Silva, a prosecution official, as saying.
But the defense argues that the police officers fired in self-defense after being threatened and assaulted by the prisoners.
All the officers involved in the operation were unharmed. In addition to the 111 prisoners killed, some 87 others were injured.
Survivors claimed that police fired on inmates who had already surrendered or were trying to hide in their cells.
Only the commanding officer of the operation, Colonel Ubiratan Guimaraes, was initially sentenced to 632 years in jail for his mishandling of the revolt and the subsequent killings.
But in 2006, a Brazilian court voided the conviction because of mistrial claims. Later that year, Guimaraes was found dead in his apartment under unclear circumstances.
A total of 79 military police officers are to stand trial in various stages.
The massacre sparked outrage among the prison inmates, some of whom set up a criminal gang known as First Command of the Capital (PCC) in 1993.
The PCC is believed to have ordered the death of the director of the prison at the time, Jose Ismael Pedrosa.
The prison was demolished in 2002.
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