By IANS
Rio de Janeiro : The Brazilian police Wednesday took control of a prison in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, rocked by three days of riots that left three inmates dead and 40 injured, Spanish news agency EFE reported.
About 200 members of the military police carried out the operation at Anibal Bruno prison in state capital Recife.
The police carried out a meticulous search for weapons in all the cells.
According to Isaac Vanderley, the warden of the Pernambuco Security Penitentiary, the prisoners did not offer any resistance to the police and stayed in the courtyards while the officers searched the facility.
The trouble at Anibal Bruno, which started Sunday afternoon, appeared to have been brought under control but flared again in the early hours of Tuesday.
“Rioting flared up when inmates from several cellblocks tried to kill the prisoners in Cellblock N (where the most dangerous men are kept),” Humberti Viana, head of the state prison service, said.
State’s judge Adeildo Nunes, investigating the riots, attributed the violence to overcrowding and suggested transfer of at least 800 inmates to other prisons.
The prison, which has a maximum capacity of 1,000 prisoners, currently has more than 3,000 inmates.