Gang war in Brazil's Pedrinhas jail kills 59 in 2013

Fifty-nine inmates
have been killed
in a single
northern Brazilian
prison this year,
according to a
judicial report.
Video taken inside
the Pedrinhas prison in Sao Luis also shows the
torture of one inmate at the hands of others - and
cases of beheadings.
The district judge who wrote the report said the
video was the "most barbarous scene" he had ever
witnessed.
Brazil has the world's fourth largest prison
population with half a million inmates occupying
spaces for 300,000.
The report contains details of sexual relations
between prisoners taking place in open spaces,
horrific scenes of torture and at least 59 deaths,
including the beheading of three prisoners, in the
last year.
Across the country, many poorly resourced jails are,
in effect, run by powerful crime gangs and the
government is looking again at a greater role for
privately run prisons, says the BBC's Wyre Davies in
Rio de Janeiro.
A judicial report into a prison in the northern
Brazilian state of Maranhao has exposed some
shocking conditions of torture, sexual abuse and
murder.
The report, now handed over to Brazil's Supreme
Court, describes a desperately overcrowded facility
where the prison authorities have lost control and
where punishment or retribution is handed-out on a
daily basis by gangs. One video, obtained by a
newspaper shows the slow torture of one inmate
until he dies.
Pedrinhas, in the state of Maranhao, is notorious for
its gang warfare; fighting between inmates in
October left 13 dead and 30 injured.
Brazil's Minister of Justice, Jose Eduardo Cardozo,
said last year that Brazil had "a medieval prison
system, which not only violates human rights [but]
does not allow for the most important element of a
penal sanction, which is social reintegration".
Officials say that despite building new prisons they
have not been able to keep pace with the increasing
number of detainees, making it hard for them to
improve conditions within the jails.

Sent From David Aniemeka