Letter from Rio de Janeiro
from Our Own Correspondent
WHILE the hot air produced
b
y world experts was contributing to rising temperatures at the Amazonian climate conference in Belém, our president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was getting heat for the deadliest police raid in Brazil’s history.
The massacre, which left 121 dead including four police, was the work of Rio’s specialist urban combat squad, BOPE – whose logo is a skull with a dagger plunged into it. The 17-hour operation by 2,500 military police executed bandidos on Mercy Mountain, a forested area surrounded by two favelas, Complexo do Alemão and da Penha, on 28 October.