Death toll of Brazil prison riot rises to at least 25

Violence part of a deadly gang war that has escalated.

RIO DE JANEIRO — The death toll of a riot in a penitentiary in northeastern Brazil rose on Sunday to at least 25 prisoners, increasing the number of prison killings this year in the country to more than 120.

Decapitations and mutilations are common in Brazil’s violent, overcrowded prisons, in which 40 percent of inmates have yet to be sentenced, but the latest wave of brutality has appalled many here.

The riot began around 5 p.m. on Saturday at the State Penitentiary of Alcacuz, 13 miles from Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, and continued until around 7 a.m. on Sunday, when riot police officers took control of the prison.

“The situation of the rebellion is controlled,” said Maj. Eduardo Franco of the Rio Grande do Norte police.

The prison has a capacity of 620 but was holding around 1,100 prisoners when the riot began, authorities said. All of the inmates had been sentenced, Franco said.

Speaking from inside the prison Sunday, Wilma Batista, director of the prison agents’ union in Rio Grande do Norte, said she had seen 27 bodies, 25 of which were mutilated and many decapitated.

She sent a photograph of two headless, mutilated corpses in a prison yard via a cellphone messaging service and said she had seen many others.

“We are shocked,” she said.

State government authorities have yet to confirm the number of deaths.

With Brazil swamped in recession, President Michel Temer’s government reeling from one graft scandal after another, and a wave of seemingly uncontrollable prison violence, many Brazilians feel they are going back to a darker recent past when crime, corruption and the economy were out of control.

“We thought we had turned that page, and now it is coming back,” said Mauricio Santoro, a professor of international relations and political science at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

The killings marked the escalation of a deadly gang war that exploded when 56 prisoners were massacred in a prison in Manaus in Amazonas state on Jan. 1. Four more were killed the next day in another jail in the city.

State authorities ascribed blame for the Manaus deaths to the Family of the North, an Amazon drug gang that had attacked prisoners connected to a rival gang, the São Paulo-based First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese acronym, PCC.

The gangs were believed to be fighting for control of lucrative drug smuggling routes. The PCC was for years allied to a Rio de Janeiro drug gang called the Red Command. Last year, the alliance fell apart, leading to a spate of prison killings.

On Jan. 6, after the Manaus massacre, 33 prisoners were found butchered at a prison in Boa Vista in Roraima state, in the far north of Brazil. State authorities said the PCC was behind the killings. Four more prisoners were killed in a third Manaus prison after being moved from the site of the first massacre.

The riot on Saturday night began when prisoners linked to the PCC rebelled during visiting hours, Batista said. The prisoners were in a separate prison, Rogério Coutinho Madruga, which is next to Alcacuz and effectively forms part of the same complex.

She said that just six prison agents were on duty, and that they managed to free visitors before retreating to another block.

“The agents saved the visitors and had to retreat” because prisoners set the block on fire, Batista said.

The escaped prisoners then attacked a block inside the Alcacuz jail which housed men from another gang, the Rio Grande do Norte-based Crime Syndicate, killing 25, Batista said. More bodies may be found, she said.

Since 2015, many of the cells inside Alcacuz have had no bars, and prisoners wander freely 24 hours a day, Batista said.

Police officers and prison guards managed to stop the killing from spreading further, but electricity to the prison was cut. Police decided to wait until dawn before entering, and they restrained desperate relatives who were trying to get inside.

Lincoln Gakiya, a state prosecutor from an organized crime unit in São Paulo state who has specialized in the PCC, said its split with the Red Command was behind the crisis. The Rio gang has allied with five other gangs around Brazil, including the Crime Syndicate.