Brazil police fire rubber bullets as inmates hold jail
NATAL, Brazil: Brazilian police fired rubber bullets on Tuesday at inmates who have taken over a jail where dozens were massacred over the weekend in the latest in a string of prison riots. Police positioned on top of the outer walls of the Alcacuz jail near the northeastern city of Natal fired at a crowd of inmates who had taken control of part of the complex.
A total of 26 prisoners were killed in Alcacuz — many of them beheaded — during a violent riot that broke out late Saturday, according to officials.
Police said they had stormed the prison and ended the violence on Sunday morning, but reporters outside the prison said numerous prisoners were still loose within the complex. Dozens of them could be seen massed in the open air between the prison blocks and the outer walls of the complex, where they erected barriers of furniture.
Others stood with flags on the partially-destroyed roof. The rubber bullets sent prisoners briefly fleeing to hide. It drew screams from a group of female relatives of prisoners who had gathered outside the prison walls.
The weekend bloodbath was the third mass-killing in Brazil’s overcrowded jails this month.
Officials blame the wave of violence on a war between drug gangs whose members are settling scores in the country’s overcrowded jails. Gruesome violence at a prison in the northwestern city of Manaus killed about 60 inmates on January 1. Many were beheaded and mutilated.
A further 33 died in a Roraima state on January 6.
In total, 134 people have been killed in prison violence this year, Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper said, citing justice ministry figures. Rights riot in watchdog Amnesty International called for an independent inquiry into the killings. “Authorities are playing a dangerous game by underestimating the scale” of the crisis in the prison system, said Renata Neder, a human rights advisor at Amnesty in Brazil.
President Michel Temer said that the federal government stood ready to provide “all assistance necessary” to quell the prison unrest. The Alcacuz prison was built for a maximum of 620 inmates but currently houses 1,083, according to the state justice department. After the two riots earlier this month, Temer announced the federal government would spend $250 million to build new prisons.
Experts say the violence is part of a war between drug gangs battling for control of one of the world’s most important cocaine markets and trafficking routes. The latest riot was thought to have been a clash between Brazil’s biggest drug gang, the First Capital Command (PCC), and a group allied to its main rival Red Command, Brazilian media said. “This is a gang war. They destroyed the whole prison,” said the governor of the surrounding Rio Grande do Norte state, Robinson Faria, on Tuesday.
He said authorities were working to stop the prisoners escaping from Alcacuz. “The PCC is defying not only the state but also the regional crime cartels in its efforts to control the drug trade.” Brazil shares borders with Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, the world’s three biggest cocaine producers. It is a key route for trafficking the drug to Europe. The Natal massacre raised fears that the wave of violence could spread across the country.
Authorities said prisoners rioted early Monday at jails in the Raimundo Nonato prison, also in Natal, and the Dutra Ladeira jail in the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte. In the latter riot, prisoners burned mattresses and threatened to kill “many people,” but no one was reported injured or escaped, Globo News said.