Twelve prisoners and a prison guard died Saturday when a riot broke out at a high security jail in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, officials said.
State justice secretary Felix Valois Coelho Junior announced at a news conference that the 13 had been killed in the mutiny, and said that the riot was now over.
Around 400 prisoners mutinied, led by a group linked to criminals in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, according to prison officers, although the justice secretary would not comment on that.
Coelho confirmed that one prison guard had died, not the two earlier rumored in what was claimed to be a revenge killing by prisoners over the death of a fellow inmate.
He said anti-riot troops found 12 weapons inside the penitentiary after managing to force their way in mid-afternoon Saturday.
They also found drugs and sugarcane liquor inside the jail, he said, adding that suspicion for smuggling those and the arms into the jail rested on prison officials.
Almost 212,000 people are currently being held inside Brazil's prisons whose total capacity is for little more than 155,800, and half of the prison population is concentrated in overcrowded penitentiaries in Sao Paulo state.
According to the Roman Catholic church, a prison riot occurs in Brazil every 36 hours.
(China Daily May 27, 2002)
