Viewing cable 05RIODEJANEIRO1238, DRUGLORD ORDERS RIO BUS BURNED

Viewing cable 05RIODEJANEIRO1238, DRUGLORD ORDERS RIO BUS BURNED

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Reference ID	Created	Released	Classification	Origin
05RIODEJANEIRO1238	2005-12-08 16:04	2010-12-07 09:09	UNCLASSIFIED	Consulate Rio De Janeiro

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 

¶1. Cariocas (Rio de Janeiro residents) awoke November 30 to a 

gruesome news story in the daily, O Globo, concerning the death o

f 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.