Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
05RIODEJANEIRO1238
2005-12-08 16:22:00
UNCLASSIFIED
Consulate Rio De Janeiro
Cable title:  

DRUGLORD ORDERS RIO BUS BURNED

Tags:  ASEC SNAR KCRM CASC BR 
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This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 RIO DE JANEIRO 001238 

SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA/BSC, WHA/PDA-LGOULD, DS/ITA AND
DS/IP/WHA
DEPT FOR INL

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ASEC SNAR KCRM CASC BR
SUBJECT: DRUGLORD ORDERS RIO BUS BURNED

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 RIO DE JANEIRO 001238

SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA/BSC, WHA/PDA-LGOULD, DS/ITA AND
DS/IP/WHA
DEPT FOR INL

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ASEC SNAR KCRM CASC BR
SUBJECT: DRUGLORD ORDERS RIO BUS BURNED


1. Cariocas (Rio de Janeiro residents) awoke
November 30 to a gruesome news story in the daily, O
Globo, concerning the death of five passengers and
wounding of fourteen others on a bus the previous
night. In a city where police brutality and drug
gang violence have become almost daily routine, the
story that twelve drug gang members had burned the
bus to seek revenge on the Military Police who had
killed one of their members the same day in the same
favela, Bras de Pina, was shocking. The bus was
apparently chosen at random; one of the armed gang
members refused to let the bus driver open the back
exit while other gang members poured gasoline on the
bus floor and set fire to it. Only a few people
managed to escape through the windows. Given the
intensity of the blaze, the victims, burned alive,
can only be identified through dental records or DNA
testing (which could take up to one year).


2. This incident raised the indignation about the
lack of public security to a new level: talk rolled
through the city, on the radio, in the elevators, on
the sidewalks. While civilians are frequent victims
of police and criminal behaviour, a new level of
violence was achieved with this act: instead of
stray bullets from raids, assaults in the home and
on the street, carjackings and "lightning
kidnappings" which appear random, this was an
intentional act taken against innocent civilians.
Julita Lemgruber, director of the Center for Safety
and Citizenship Studies at the University Candido
Mendes, was cited as saying that if the state did
not respond promptly there would be more and/or
worse violence to come. Rubem Cesar Fernandes,
coordinator of the NGO Viva Rio (which works in the
city's favelas),stated that never before had the
city seen such a barbarous act.


3. On December 1, police discovered four gang
members shot dead, in an abandoned automobile. A 13-
year old illiterate, drug-using, orphaned female,
detained on December 3, confessed to being part of
the gang that attacked the 350 bus on Passeio-Iraja
bus line and identified the four dead males as
having participated in the attack. They were
reportedly ordered murdered by a gang leader named
Mica, who is vying for control of the gang with the
head of drug trafficking in the Morro da Fe, Lorde,
who ordered the original bus attack. Police,
however, are also investigating other possible
explanations for these acts, such as retaliation
against a crooked cop attempt to extort the gang or
Brazil's most feared druglord, Fernandinho Beira-Mar
of the Red Command (Comando Vermelho),ordering the
hit from his maximum security seclusion in the north
of Brazil for unknown reasons. An anonymous phone
call to the police, ostensibly by a Red Command
member, said the four dead gang members were not
shot in the head, specifically so that they could be
recognized both by the victims and the police.


4. On December 2, Amnesty International published a
report entitled "They Come in Shooting," criticizing
repression-oriented public security in Brazil, using
Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo as exampla of cities
where police "overkill" encourages a concentration
of violence in the shantytowns (favelas) where poor
people live. But poor people, as these recent
events demonstrate, are just as much victims of the
barbarity of drug-related violence as of police
violence. The irony is that four gang members
involved in the bus attack were killed within 24
hours and seven others are actively being sought by
the Red Command - prompt retributive vicious justice
offered to the police so that the business of drug
trafficking can get back to normal in the favela and
the police can return to their barracks. Letters to
the Editor of O Globo are again calling for the use
of the military, the same call that happened during
the Easter 2004 war in Rocinha, to take back control
of the city.


5. As Marcelo Itagiba, the State Secretary for
Public Security, says with frequency: The police
cannot address the root causes of violence in
Brazilian society - lack of education, lack of
housing, lack of basic infrastructure, lack of jobs,
lack of hope - that make the poor particularly
vulnerable to victimizing and being victimized.


6. This cable was cleared by Embassy Brasilia.

ATKINS