A massacre of prisoners puts Amazonia on alert | L …

From Brasilia

As if they were animals. Fifty-five prisoners were slaughtered between the day before yesterday and Sunday in four prisons in Manaus, the state capital of Amazonas, whose authorities hired a refrigerated truck to stack the bodies, for lack of money. Sufficient space at the morgue of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. The first mbadacre took place on Sunday at noon when 15 detainees were killed while visiting relatives in the Anisio Jobim penitentiary complex, located on the BR-174 highway, on the outskirts of the city's largest city. endless Amazon region (plus 4 million km2).

On Monday, prison guards and employees of the prison-managing company Umanizzare found 40 more dead bodies in the cells of four institutions, some of which are located in the capital's metropolitan area. A group of women cut the road in protest of the lack of information on the situation of their comrades, but were later driven out badly by the federal highways police.

In the face of the collapse of penitentiary security, Amazonian governor Wilson Lima yesterday urged the federal government to extend the presence of the national public security guard for a year. The Minister of Justice and Public Security, Sergio Moro, announced the dispatch of about twenty elements of the working group on prison intervention, which could reach a hundred in the next days.

The main badumption on which the intelligence services and the prosecution work is that the murders were a settling of accounts between two factions facing the control of the family of the North, which hegemonizes drug trafficking and controls most prisons. . One of the fighting groups is headed by Jose Roberto Fernandes and the other Joao Pinto Carioca.

Located on the Amazon River, Manaus is a strategic point where the "solimoes (river) route" ends with shipments of cocaine from Colombia and Peru. From there, the goods are shipped to Europe.

According to the United Nations, Brazil, from ports of the Atlantic and Amazon, sends the largest cargoes to Belgium, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.

This market growth has led to the economic expansion and arming of the Northern Family, considered the third most powerful group in the country, according to a ranking led by the first commando of the capital, appeared in São Paulo Comando Vermelho is from Rio de Janeiro. .

Several of the victims found on Monday showed signs of choking or strangulation, which reinforces the hypothesis that they were executed by their roommates. This would indicate that the murderers and the dead were part of the family, since in prisons, the pavilions are usually allocated to different bands.

The governor of Amazonas Wilson Lima said that "the problem of prison overcrowding has not been solved" and that it contributes to this type of tragedy in a country of about 650,000 prisoners. Instead, Minister Moro said yesterday in Portugal that it was not possible to reduce the prison population and proposed as a solution to build more prisons by taking as a model the "American supermax with individual cells, without leaks, without rebellions ".

The badbadinations this week could lead to a wave of rebellions accepted by Lima, but stating that it was an "isolated problem".

In January 2017, Jobim Penitentiary Complex was the scene of a confrontation between men from the North Family and the First Command of the capital, who has been trying for years to extend his arm strength in this region of northwestern Amazon. The fight lasted almost a day and killed 56 people. Most of the dead CCP members were mutilated and filmed to show the strength of the family.

Five days later, another riot broke out in the Monte Cristo Agricola Penitentiary in the state of Roraima, killing 33 people at the hands of members of the capital's first commando. It was a vendetta at the Manaus butchery.

Roraima, in northwestern Amazonia, is a barrel of multiple-barreled powder: the First Commandment has been established, controlling prisons and drug trafficking, which adds to the geopolitical tension on the border with Venezuela , an area of ​​Bolsonaro would like US troops to settle, as he said two months ago to Donald Trump during his visit to Washington. An idea that was later corrected, but somewhat ambiguously.