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Brazil Deploys Army to Respond to Prison Violence
The government on Wednesday approved the sending of federal troops to Maranhao, a state in northeastern Brazil, to combat a wave of attacks evidently ordered from inside one of the nation’s prisons, officials said.
The decision was published in the Official Daily and establishes that an unspecified number of troops with the National Security Force will remain in Maranhao for at least the next 30 days to strengthen security around the Oct. 5 presidential election.
The Justice Ministry said that the troops will be deployed in the city of Sao Luis, where between last Saturday and Monday there were numerous attacks that, according to the authorities, were ordered by gangs operating in the Pedrinhas prison, one of the country’s most violent penitentiaries.
In two days, according to the Sao Luis police, the alleged accomplices of the prisoners on the outside burned at least nine public buses and eight other vehicles, but no injuries or deaths were reported.
Authorities say that the attacks followed the implementation of different measures to strengthen control over the prison, which is experiencing an increased rate of violent incidents.
According to government figures, there have been 75 murders of inmates in that prison since January 2013, 17 of them so far this year and the latest one this month.
At the end of last year, several prisoners were decapitated inside Pedrinhas in a massacre that was filmed by inmates and images of which were posted on the Internet by the murderers themselves.
In recent weeks, there have been various prison uprisings in Pedrinhas and during one of them about 40 inmates managed to escape by jumping over the prison walls.
The investigations launched by the authorities to try and impose order in the facility led to the arrest of Claudio Barcelos, director of one of the prison units, who was charged with facilitating the escape of inmates.
Published in Latino Daily News
Source: http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/brazil-deploys-army-to-respond-to-prison-violence/31220#When:14:02:13Z
