According to daily O Estado de S. Paulo, the order to stop the rebellions in the prisons of São Paulo, Brazil, came from the chief of the drug gang PCC (First Command of the Capital) who is in jail himself.
O Estado says that Marcos Willians Herba, better known as Marcola, called his cronies and ordered them to free all the hostages and end the insurgence after talking with three representatives of the São Paulo state government.
Cláudio Lembo, the governor of São Paulo, denied, however, that there was any negotiation between his government and the organized crime. We would never do that, said Lembo to GloboNews this Tuesday, May 16.
All the rebellions of prison inmates in the state of São Paulo have finished, according to the latest bulletin, released by the State Department of Prison Administration.
Since the beginning of the wave of criminal attacks on Friday (12), at least 360 people were held hostage at the 58 Penitentiaries and Temporary Detention Centers where the rebellions occurred.
A gathering between Geraldo Alckmin, the PSDB party candidate to the presidency of Brazil, and politicians and experts in public security have concluded that one of the main responsible for the recent attacks by organized crime was Justice Minister, Márcio Thomaz Bastos.
They lambasted a December 2003 law sponsored by Bastos which established that prison directors cannot act without judicial authorization.
The governor says he was not able to transfer Marcola to a maximum security prison as was his intention since the beginning of the year. The government never got a judicial authorization that was requested in January. The drug chief ended up being transferred any way without the legal papers.