QUIET IN SAO PAULO, BUT JOURNALISTS' KIDNAPPING MARKS NEW

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 SAO PAULO 000887

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR DS/IP/WHA, DS/ICI/PII, DS/DSS/OSAC, WHA/BSC
NSC FOR FEARS
DEA FOR OEL/DESANTIS AND NIRL/LEHRER
DEPT ALSO FOR WHA/PDA, DRL/PHD, INL, DS/IP/WHA, DS/DSS/ITA
BRASILIA FOR RSO AND LEGAT; RIO DE JANEIRO FOR RSO
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD
INL ALSO FOR SGARCIA AND AMARTIN

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV KCRM CASC ASEC SNAR SOCI BR
SUBJECT: QUIET IN SAO PAULO, BUT JOURNALISTS' KIDNAPPING MARKS NEW
PCC TACTIC

REF: (A) SAO PAULO 873; (B) SAO PAULO 869; (C) SAO PAULO 865; (D)

SAO PAULO 771; (E) SAO PAULO 742; (F) SAO PAULO 573

SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED - PLEASE PROTECT ACCORDINGLY.


1. (SBU) SUMMARY. Sao Paulo residents enjoyed a relatively quiet
Father's Day weekend, as a feared repeat of the widespread violence
that occurred on Mother's Day three months ago failed to materialize
(ref B). Some 13,000 inmates were given weekend furloughs for the
holiday, but only scattered incidents reminiscent of previous PCC
attacks were reported, and there appears to have been no
orchestrated wave of attacks of the kind that the state has
experienced on three separate occasions since May (refs C, D, F).
Police were out in force over the weekend, including in fashionable
neighborhoods where businesses were hoping for a burst of holiday
sales. But while the city and state escaped a surge in violence, a
two-person television crew was kidnapped on Saturday morning and
their network was given a PCC manifesto to air that complained of
conditions in the state's prisons. Meanwhile, one of the founding
leaders of the PCC was assassinated in prison, most likely on orders
from the gang's current leadership, and President Lula and Sao Paulo
Governor Lembo reached an accord regarding the availability of
federal troops and intelligence services to combat organized crime
in Brazil's most populous state (ref A). END SUMMARY.

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FATHER'S DAY PASSES QUIETLY IN SAO PAULO
--------------


2. (SBU) Sao Paulo residents breathed a collective sigh of relief
on Monday, August 14, as Brazil's Father's Day weekend passed
without a significant spike in violence, even with the release of
13,000 prisoners on holiday furlough. Prior to the weekend there
was concern that the organized criminal gang First Capital Command
(PCC) would use the statutorily-mandated prison furlough (refs B, C)
as a means to launch another wave of violent confrontations against
the state's police forces akin to the Mother's Day rampage that left
44 police officers and some 100 suspects dead over the course of one
week in May (ref E). This concern was heightened after a "third
wave" of violence hit Sao Paulo state last week in the run-up to
Father's Day (refs A, B). Weekend leave was cancelled for all
officers of the Military Police (PM) within metropolitan Sao Paulo.
Police were out in greater-than-usual numbers on Saturday, and were
noticeable standing in groups on street corners and conducting
walking and driving patrols in the fashionable shopping districts of
Jardim Paulista and Itaim Bibi, where store owners hoped for a surge
in sales for Father's Day.


3. (SBU) Police reported drive-by shooting attacks against the
buildings of a bank, a police station and Brazil's Bar Association
(OAB) in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday, August 12. The police did
not specifically link the attacks to the PCC, but stated that the
attacks seemed to have been perpetrated by the same group. Also on
Friday night, police killed two men in a shootout, and afterwards
found a letter on one that purportedly carried death threats against
a list of area judges. By Sunday night, police arrested at least 32
of the prisoners out on furlough for new crimes, and killed four in
confrontations. Four buses of the same company were lit afire in a
garage on Sunday evening.

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TV CREW KIDNAPPED; PCC MESSAGE BROADCASTED
--------------


4. (SBU) On Saturday morning, August 12, a television reporter and
cameraman working for one of Brazil's major television and news
conglomerates, Rede Globo, were kidnapped from a bakery near the
network's studios. The cameraman was released late Saturday night
near the same spot, with a DVD containing a recorded message from
the purported kidnappers. He was told that the reporter would be

SAO PAULO 00000887 002 OF 003


killed if the network did not air the recording immediately. The
three-minute message, which Rede Globo began broadcasting early
Sunday morning, was made by a self-proclaimed PCC member who
lamented conditions within Sao Paulo state's prison system,
particularly in regard to the disciplinary system known as the
Differentiated Discipline Regime (RDD) used to isolate inmates
considered to be gang leaders or otherwise problematic. The
reporter was released in the Morumbi neighborhood just after
midnight Monday, August 14, after being held for 40 hours.


5. (SBU) In a press release, Rede Globo executives said they
consulted with the International News Safety Institute (INSI) and
the Atlanta and Beirut offices of the international security
consulting firm AKE Group before airing the tape. Rede Globo
executives are quoted as saying they were advised by both
organizations that they had no real choice but to air the PCC
message, given the circumstances and the short deadline set by the
kidnappers.


6. (SBU) A police commander was quoted as saying this was the
first time in 30 years on the job that he had seen a news crew and
network used by kidnappers in this manner. Kidnappings for money
occur relatively frequently throughout Brazil, so much so that a
particular modus operandi known as "lightning" or "express"
kidnappings, wherein a person is held captive at gunpoint usually in
his or her own car for several hours for the purpose of withdrawing
cash from multiple ATM machines before and after midnight to
circumvent daily withdrawal limits, are no longer considered
kidnappings by the Sao Paulo state agency for public security, but
are instead categorized as robberies. An editor of the widely
circulated daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo ran a column Sunday
entitled "We Live Colombia," in which he likened the current climate
of threats against police, judges, politicians and now journalists
made by "extremely organized drug traffickers" in Sao Paulo to the
infamous narco-terrorist situation in Colombia.

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OLD GUARD ELIMINATED
--------------


7. (SBU) In what appears to be a bit of "housecleaning," one of
the two original founders of the PCC, Cesar Augusto Roriz da Silva,
known as Cesinha, was killed by another inmate in the maximum
security prison at Avere in an apparent PCC assassination. Cesinha
and Jos Mrcio Felcio dos Santos, aka Geleiao, are considered to
have founded the PCC in 1993 in reaction to the infamous riot at
Carandiru Prison during which 111 inmates were gunned down by
Military Police shock troops. They also gave the PCC its moniker,
which was the name of their prison soccer team.


8. (SBU) The two formed the PCC as an inmate-based protectorate,
ostensibly to "combat the oppression within the Sao Paulo prison
system," and had a grand plan of uniting with the Rio-based Red
Command to create a pan-Brazilian prison movement. In 2002 the two
were pushed out of the organization for being too "radical," and the
PCC's current leader, Marcos Wilians Herbas Camacho, known as
Marcola, consolidated power and focused the organization on criminal
activity - both inside and outside of the prisons - rather than
political movement. But the PCC continues to rail against poor
prison conditions (see discussion above regarding the kidnapping of
a journalist) and stages periodic riots that ultimately destroy the
facilities they claim are deficient. Both Cesinha and Geleiao have
long been marked for death by the PCC, and they in turn formed a new
gang they called the Third Capital Command, or TCC. PCC and TCC
elements have fought periodically for control of Sao Paulo's
prisons, and assassinations have been stepped-up in recent months as
the PCC has been flexing its muscle throughout the state of Sao
Paulo (reftels). Cesinha was killed at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday
morning, August 13, with a wooden knife wielded by another inmate,
who was immediately brought under control by prison authorities.

SAO PAULO 00000887 003 OF 003



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NO FEDERAL TROOPS, FOR NOW
--------------


9. (SBU) Meanwhile, President Lula and Sao Paulo Governor Claudio
Lembo reached an accord of sorts on Friday, August 11, regarding the
mobilization of federal troops in Sao Paulo to combat organized
crime (ref A). During a forty-minute meeting at Congonhas Airport
in Sao Paulo, Lula told the governor that 10,000 troops of the
Brazilian Army stood ready to deploy across the state to help fight
the PCC; the governor simply need ask. Governor Lembo assured the
president that the troops would not be necessary. Instead, the two
executives agreed that the Army would provide additional
intelligence and logistical support to the state's security
apparatus, and the governor told reporters after the meeting that
residents can expect better integration between Army and state
intelligence functions within a week.


10. (SBU) In particular, the Army will help train agents of the
state Secretariat for Penitentiary Administration (SAP),which has
been struggling to establish its own intelligence infrastructure
leading to difficulties in information-sharing between it and other
state and federal intelligence agencies. In that vein, on Friday
the federal government also made available to the SAP approximately
$20 million of a promised $50 million public security grant to
purchase intelligence and security equipment for the state's
prisons. Also, it was reported that as a result of the meeting
between President Lula and Governor Lembo, the Army may provide
satellite imagery to the state's Military Police to assist in the
planning of operations against criminal factions.

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THE NEXT "NEW BIG THING"
--------------


11. (SBU) COMMENT: While a new crime wave did not sweep across Sao
Paulo over Father's Day weekend as many expected, the PCC and its
activities were never very far from the thoughts of state's
residents or its political leaders. The agreement on federal troops
will lessen the pressure on Governor Lembo to accept the offer made
by the President and the Minister of Justice (ref A) (NOTE: Last
week, even members of Lembo's own political party and its chief
coalition partner publicly questioned his intransigence to accepting
a role for the Army to play in state security. END NOTE.),and the
intelligence sharing plan may actually afford the state a new
effectiveness in its ongoing battle with the PCC. But the PCC's
repeated assaults on public life in Sao Paulo, together with its
latest shocking tactics -- the kidnapping of a television crew to
ensure that its message was broadcast to the public, the discovery
of the judicial hit-list and the expanded use of homemade bombs
against soft targets last week (ref A) -- indicate the PCC may be
adopting urban terrorist tactics not usually expected from a
prison-based gang thought to be concerned only with running drugs,
guns, cigarettes and unlicensed transport businesses. Sao Paulo's
elite may have more to fear from the PCC in the future, and the
state government may be forced to wage war against the gang on yet
another front. END COMMENT.


12. (U) This cable was coordinated/cleared by Embassy Brasilia.

MCMULLEN