VZCZCXRO9837
RR RUEHRG
DE RUEHSO #0887/01 2261359
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 141359Z AUG 06
FM AMCONSUL SAO PAULO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5606
INFO RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA 6681
RUEHRG/AMCONSUL RECIFE 3082
RUEHRI/AMCONSUL RIO DE JANEIRO 7359
RUEHAC/AMEMBASSY ASUNCION 2720
RUEHBU/AMEMBASSY BUENOS AIRES 2398
RUEHMN/AMEMBASSY MONTEVIDEO 2111
RUEHLP/AMEMBASSY LA PAZ 2964
RUEHSG/AMEMBASSY SANTIAGO 1835
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RUMIAAA/USCINCSO MIAMI FL
RUEAWJC/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC
RUEABND/DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMIN HQ WASHDC

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. 
 
---------------------------------------- 
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. 
 
------------------------------------------ 
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. 
 
-------------------- 
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 
 
 
 
-------------------------- 
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. 
 
------------------------ 
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