SAO PAULO — Brazilian inmates on Sunday released four prison officers who were held hostage for more than day at a Brazilian penitentiary in the northeastern city of Aracaju.
Nearly 130 relatives who had arrived Saturday to visit family members at the prison were also allowed to leave, said Mauricio Lunes, commanding officer for the military police in the state of Sergipe, home to Aracaju.
Lunes said authorities agreed to transfer some of the inmates out of the maximum-security prison in Aracaju. The move was the main demand that prompted the midday uprising Saturday in one of the wings of the penitentiary.
"We managed to control the situation before it was extended to other areas of the prison," Lunes told TV Globo's G1, a Brazilian Internet news portal. Two officers had minor wounds.
Legal counsel for the prison Sandra Melo said the relatives were not threatened, but they were trapped while inmates held the prison officers hostage. Melo is the legal adviser for the company Fundacao Reviver, which runs the Advogado Antonio Jacinto Filho complex housing 476 inmates.
About 500,000 inmates are held in Brazil's more than 1,200 prisons, and uprisings are common. In 2012, inmates at the same prison held 131 hostages for 26 hours to demand a probe into alleged beatings by the guards.