VIOLENCE KILLS DOZENS IN BRAZIL

Attacks Ordered By Imprisoned Leaders Of Gang Are Called 'Direct
Attack' On State

SAO PAOLO, Brazil // Four days of violence in Brazil's financial
capital has killed more than 80 people, including 39 law enforcement
officers, who were victims of an underworld run by prisoners able to
use cell phones to order killings, drug deals and violent unrest in
prisons and on city streets.

Authorities called the attacks an unprecedented assault on public
security in Latin America's largest country. One top official labeled
it the first terrorist strike on Brazil.

At least 180 acts of violence against police and fire stations,
public buses, banks and other targets have been reported since the
disturbances erupted Friday. Uprisings were reported in 80 prisons.

As of late yesterday, officials had confirmed that 81 people had been
killed and 49 wounded in the attacks. Law enforcement officials, who
had promised swift action, reported the arrests of 91 suspects.

"We are not going to give in to organized crime," Sao Paulo Gov.
Claudio Limbo said.

Jail uprisings are common in Brazil, but the current violence looks
more like a guerrilla offensive with multiple fronts in a war between
a powerful prison-based gang and the state. The weekend death toll in
Sao Paulo exceeded that in Baghdad.

"It's a direct attack against the state, against public order," said
Elisabete Albernaz, a specialist in public safety at Viva Rio, a
research institute in Rio de Janeiro. "This is a show of power, using
terror and panic to destabilize the normal order."

Sao Paolo's chief public prosecutor, Janice Ascari, called the
attacks "pure terrorism."

On a day when Brazil's World Cup soccer squad was unveiled, talk of
the violence overwhelmed sports chat across the soccer-crazed nation.

Fear gripped Sao Paolo, the world's third biggest metropolitan area
with 20 million people. Many schools and shops closed for the day or
closed early, public transportation was crippled, and people scurried
to get home before dark.

"I'm afraid to take the subway: it's a very easy target," said Bianca
Vaz Mondo, 21, a student at the University of Sao Paolo.

Authorities blame the violence on the prison-based gang First Command
of the Capital, known by its Portuguese acronym PCC, which apparently
was angry about the transfer of hundreds of gang members, including
its leader, to a remote penitentiary.

Officials use such transfers to dilute the power of imprisoned mob
leaders, who wield extraordinary power while behind bars. From
inside, gang heads can order drug deals, kidnappings, bank robberies
and bank robberies.

"The leaders communicate through [smuggled] cell phones," said Karyna
Sposato, who works with a U.N. group on crime prevention in Sao
Paolo. "They use cell phones for the organization of criminal acts."

Other conduits to the outside world, officials said, are lawyers and
prison visitors, mostly spouses, partners and mothers of those imprisoned.

The coordinated uprisings in Sao Paolo sparked corresponding riots at
10 prisons in the neighboring states of Mato Grosso do Sul and
Parana, officials said.

From behind bars, PCC members are thought to control a major portion
of the narcotics traffic in Sao Paolo, which is a center for the
domestic market and for the shipment of cocaine to Europe.

Institutional corruption among police and prison guards, combined
with deep resentment over brutality against prisoners, has spurred
violence in Brazil's notoriously crowded prisons, which contain
nearly 350,000 prisoners.

The most notorious incident was a police assault on rioting prisoners
at the Carandiru prison in 1992, which left 111 inmates dead and
became a vivid symbol of the troubles in Brazil's prisons.

"What is happening now represents the story of the prison system
itself. It is motivated by the day-to-day hate and anger that the
prisoner experiences from being humiliated," said Alvaro Augusto de
Sa, a law professor who was once a psychologist in the prison system.

Marcelo Soares and Patrick J. McDonnell write for the Los Angeles Times.