Brazilian gang kidnaps two journalists

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Aug 13: A powerful criminal gang that has terrorized Brazil's largest state of Sao Paulo kidnapped two Brazilian television journalists, police and a TV station said today.

Guilherme Portanova, a reporter for TV Globo, and his assistant, Alexandre Coelho Calado, were abducted by three armed men yesterday at a bakery near the station's studio in Sao Paulo, Globo said in a statement.

Calado was later released in front of the studio with a recording that his kidnappers demanded be aired by Globo, Brazil's most influential TV network.

Portanova, who frequently covers the crime beat, has not been released.

On the tape, which Globo aired overnight, a member of the prison gang known as the First Command of the Capital, or PCC by its Portuguese initials, criticised the dire conditions of Brazil's prison system.

''We want a prison system with humane conditions, not a bankrupt, inhumane system in which we are subjected to innumerous humiliations and beatings,'' the statement read. ''The Brazilian penal system is, in reality, a true human dump, where human beings are thrown as if they were animals.'' The kidnappings capped a week of violence in which the PCC attacked police and torched buses, banks and government buildings in cities around the state. At least six suspects have been killed by police and at least 28 have been arrested since the attacks began last Sunday.

The latest unrest marks the third wave of PCC violence in four months in and around Sao Paulo, South America's financial capital.

The PCC, which was born in Sao Paulo's overcrowded prison system in 1993, called the latest attacks to demand furloughs for this weekend's Father's Day observation. More than 10,000 inmates were released for the holiday, putting the state's forces on alert.

The violence has raised doubts about the state government's ability to control its prisons, where gang leaders frequently orchestrate riots and use smuggled cell phones to give orders to subordinates on the outside.

With Brazil's presidential election less than two months away, the attacks have made violence a top campaign issue and exposed a deep political rift between the state and federal governments.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is up for re-election, has repeatedly offered to send in the army to help quell the violence. But Sao Paulo state Gov. Claudio Lembo, a member of a rival political party, has refused the offer.

REUTERS