FIVE inmates have been decapitated and had their heads displayed on poles by fellow detainees in a prison uprising in Brazil in the latest outbreak of unrest in one of the world’s most violent penal systems.

Authorities said that the rebellion at Presidente Venceslau penitentiary, 600km (373 miles) west of São Paulo city, was orchestrated by members of one of Brazil’s most violent and well organised gangs, the First Command of the Capital (PCC). Its members overpowered guards and headed for the section that housed the victims, who were thought to be former PCC members expelled from the gang and held in isolation for their own safety. Water and light were cut off to parts of the jail run by the prisoners.

After the killings and the display of victims’ heads to the media outside the prison walls, the leaders of the uprising contacted a local radio station and said that they were protesting against the “humiliations and repressions” they had suffered in jail. They demanded that anyone who had completed two thirds of their sentence be transferred to semi-open prisons.

The authorities reported last night that negotiations with the prisoners had been successful and that the rebels had surrendered. “It’s all under control, the rebellion is over. The last hostages have been freed,” a prison service spokesman said, without giving any details. Police moved into the compound shortly afterwards.

The violence is the latest in a spate of uprisings in Brazil’s prison system. Several prisoners were decapitated in a rebellion in the Amazonian state of Rondônia last year.

“What is peculiar to Brazil is the exceptional level and type of violence,” Andy Barclay, project director of the International Centre for Prison Studies, said. “There are, of course, killings in other systems around the world but I’ve never come across elsewhere the torture and decapitation like you find in Brazil.”

Police speculated that the killings could be a signal from the PCC to the authorities that it was still in business after recent government successes against it inside and outside prison. “The PCC lost some of its power following a crackdown by the state. Now, it is trying to take back that power,” Roberto Porto, an anti-organised crime prosecutor, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper.

The number of prison rebellions in Brazil declined last year but there have been several incidents this year. São Paulo’s Febem juvenile detention system alone has been rocked by 28 uprisings this year.

Experts say the violence in Brazil’s system is partly due to chronic overcrowding, as the population trebled between 1992 and 2004, putting great pressure on conditions which are routinely condemned by human rights groups.

Brazil’s soaring crime rates place the authorities under severe pressure to lock up as many criminals as possible.

Prison gangs are left to run their own wings, where they administer a brutal version of justice. They control the drugs and alcohol in the prisons, where Aids is also a severe problem. The gang leaders have mobile phones with which they remain in contact with leaders in other prisons and members on the outside.

The PCC started off as a São Paulo prison gang, providing protection to members. It has since spread its control from the state’s prisons to the shanty towns, where it is now believed to control large amounts of the country’s booming drug trade. In Rio de Janeiro the prisons and local drug trade are largely controlled by the city’s Red Commando gang.

The authorities are embarking on a huge prison building programme, but many of these have yet to come into use to relieve conditions in existing jails.

This week’s rebellion took place in one of the state’s oldest prisons, which houses almost 800 prisoners instead of its intended capacity of 680. Fourteen inmates were killed in the same jail in an escape attempt in 1986.

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