Investigators in Brazilian probe have won the support of the working class, one observer points out, because 'people see the rich and powerful . . . going to jail. Slowly, things are changing.'

RIO DE JANEIRO--He was one of their own, a federal legislator. But his trail led a congressional investigative commission deep into a blood-spattered labyrinth of criminality, transforming the legislators into national heroes and forcing Brazil to confront the dimensions of the threat posed by drug mafias.

The congressional deputies, a colorful mix of veteran crime fighters, evangelical Christians and ex-addicts, traveled to the Amazon state of Acre on the Bolivian border to hold hearings. They listened to frightened witnesses, some masked to hide their identities, accuse Congressman Hildebrando Pascoal and his family of turning Acre into a narco-state.

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BRAZIL: More than 100 inmates escaped from a crowded jail in Sao Paulo after six armed men stormed the prison early on Monday to spring two alleged drug traffickers before the Christmas holidays, Brazilian police said yesterday.

"We are in a high-risk time of the year, not only because of the holidays but also because it is getting very hot," said Sao Paulo's 7th District police chief, Col Marco Antonio.

"These two had been in since August and as we moved closer to the end of the year they probably increased the pressure on those who could rescue them," Col Antonio said.

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RIO DE JANEIRO (Scripps Howard News Service) -- Brazilian authorities have launched a crackdown on a violent dance craze amid fears that it has claimed the lives of more than a hundred young people.

``Funk balls'' divide Rio's impoverished youth into two gangs which take part in organized fights each weekend at dozens of illegal all-night ``raves.'' About 300,000 young people regularly attend funk balls at more than 100 venues.

But the state government, which has ordered an official inquiry, says the events encourage violence, corrupt minors and are linked to drugs. In the last 2-1/2 weeks, two leading party organizers have been arrested and charged with inciting violence.

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BRAZIL - When police arrested Father Georges Saliba they thought he was an impostor using the sanctity of the cloth to escape detection.

With 11.5 kg of cocaine strapped to the inside of his cassock, they instantly dismissed the 47-year-old's claims that he was a Catholic priest. But it was revealed last week that the drug mule is in fact a real priest who regularly celebrates Mass in Sao Paulo, Latin America's biggest city.

Gen Gilberto Tadeu Vieira Cezar, chief of Sao Paulo's federal police, said: "Father Saliba was on his way to Portugal when officers arrested him at the international airport. He was carrying cocaine which was divided into small bags and strapped to the inside of his religious clothing."

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Drug dealers in Brazil thought they had come up with the perfect Christmas present for their best clients - a free CD for every five kilos of cocaine purchased.

But their plans came unstuck when the police raided the headquarters of the Red Command, one of Brazil's most notorious criminal gangs. Apart from seizing large quantities of drugs, the authorities also took possession of hundreds of copies of "Prohibited Rap", a pirate CD the gangsters had specially pressed for their regular customers.

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RIO DE JANEIRO - A series of congressional investigations in recent weeks has uncovered widespread official corruption in Brazil, roiled political circles and raised real, if slim, hope that the probes will lead to jail time for the most prominent perpetrators.

The investigations, known here as CPIs, have centered on banks and the judiciary, and on organized crime. Thus far, the organized crime investigation has been the most successful, as the panel has unearthed a web of corruption and criminal acts - in many cases involving drug trafficking - that has spanned 11 states and included more than 60 government officials.

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A team of parliamentary crusaders is being credited with making unprecedented strides against organised crime, including the unravelling of drug mafias that involve politicians, businessmen, police and bankers in half of Brazil's states.

Led by Magno Malta, a singing evangelical priest who beat drug addiction to become a member of the congress, the all-party commission has exposed a national network of crime. Since beginning work in April it has brought about the imprisonment of 39 people, including one congress member accused of slicing off a victim's limbs with a chainsaw.

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A new team of parliamentary crusaders is being credited with making unprecedented strides against organised crime in Brazil, including the unravelling of drugs mafias that include elected politicians, businessmen, police and bankers in half the country's states.

Led by Magno Malta, a singing evangelical priest who beat drug addiction to become a member of congress, the all-party parliamentary commission has exposed a national network of crime.

Since the commission began work in April it has brought about the imprisonment of 39 people - including one congress member accused of slicing off a victim's limbs with a chainsaw.

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BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil and Peru are going to join forces to fight the growing penetration of Peruvian drug cartels across the countries' Amazon jungle border, a senior official said Friday.

The announcement came as the arrest this week of a Brazilian lawmaker on allegations he ran a death squad with links to a drug ring in the border state of Acre highlighted rising ties with Brazil's Amazon by regional drug barons.

``Peru is doing an excellent job in eradicating coca crops with crop substitution programmes and that is pushing the drug cartels toward the border region with Brazil,'' Walter Maierovitch, Brazil's drug secretary, told journalists.

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BRASILIA (Reuters) - A Brazilian congressional commission Tuesday approved a damning report on drug trafficking and the activity of death squads in the jungle state of Acre, linking them to lawmaker Hildebrando Pascoal.

The report, by a special commission, accused 28 people, including Pascoal, his brother and two of his cousins, of being members of an international crime ring, a spokeswoman for the head of the congressional panel said.

Pascoal has been under investigation for months by another congressional committee for allegedly running a notorious death squad in the Amazonian border state. At the beginning of August, the committee unanimously decided to begin proceedings to strip Pascoal of his congressional immunity.

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BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) -- Brazil and Peru are renewing an agreement to fight drug trafficking along their remote Amazon jungle border, Brazil's top drug official said Friday.

The agreement, to be signed Monday in the Peruvian capital of Lima, updates a 1976 accord for repression and prevention of trafficking, Antidrug Secretary Walter Maierovitch said.

Peru's program to substitute the cultivation of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, had pushed traffickers toward the border, he said.

According to Barry McCaffrey, head of the White House's anti-drug policy, the program has led to a 56 percent reduction of cocaine production in Peru and a 22 percent decline in Bolivia.

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SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A French expatriate was arrested in Brazil's Amazonian state of Para Saturday and charged with masterminding a Colombian drug-trafficking ring, authorities said.

The suspect, identified as Mario Serge, is accused of heading a gang that smuggled cocaine from Colombia to France, said a police officer in Para's capital, Belem. There were no further details about the suspect.

Local television network Globo said police found huge quantities of cocaine wrapped in small plastic bags or hidden in food cans at Serge's house in Belem, about 1,863 miles from Sao Paulo. Police could not confirm the details.



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The White House's drug policy chief warned Monday that Colombia faces a "giant threat" because of cocaine production.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey said that production in Colombia sparked economic and security problems and hindered government talks with leftist guerillas, adding the problem had worsened in the last four years.

But the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said there was "absolutely zero" chance of direct U.S. involvement in the region.

"Our vision is that the United States must be prepared to provide resources, equipment, training and intelligence but the most important thing is to provide political support," McCaffrey said at a news conference in Brazil, the first stop on a four-nation visit to Latin America.

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Brazil's Amazon Indians face possibly their biggest threat yet from Colombian drug traffickers, Brazil's drug secretary warned yesterday.

Cocaine traffickers - harassed by mounting military operations along their air routes - have moved to the ground, "using the Indians to transport coca paste directly to clandestine laboratories in Colombia," Walter Maierovitch said.

Indians with their knowledge of the jungle are able to move by foot, mule and canoe with little police interference, Brazilian officials say.

"They are being harassed into transporting drugs," said Roberto Lustosa, a spokesman for the national Indian foundation, Funai. "Some tribes are having their first outside contact with traffickers."

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Five men drove up to a bar on Rio's poor north side and opened fire with automatic rifles, killing four people in an attack targeting a drug dealer, police said Tuesday.

The shootings took place shortly after midnight Monday in the Pavuna district, police in nearby Rocha Miranda said.

Two of the victims were members of local samba groups who were performing at the bar. Police said they were shot by accident because they were standing close to the gunmen's target -- a 17-year-old drug trafficker.



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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Even before it starts, the summit of European, Latin American and Caribbean leaders has challenged the United States and its special relationship with Western Hemisphere nations.

The possibility of a free trade zone linking the European Union and the Mercosur trade bloc is a new option for South America, a region sometimes seen as North America's back yard. And though free trade is years away at best, there clearly is a new player at the table.

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SAO PAULO -- Police say they have uncovered an elaborate drug-trafficking ring masterminded by an American expatriate who recruited Brazilian Air Force officers to smuggle cocaine to Europe on military jets.

Air Force pilots and high-ranking officers with customs clearance allegedly stashed the narcotics in their luggage on routine military flights to Spain and France, police said.

Authorities said this week they believe Missouri-born John Michael White, jailed twice in Brazil on drug-related charges, was the brains behind the operation that lasted at least one year.

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) Brazil's top drug authority says Colombian cartels are using native people in the Amazon jungle to transport drugs, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Anti-drug Secretary Walter Maierovitch said Indians carry drugs from Brazil to refineries in Colombia, the Jornal do Brasil newspaper said.

Maierovitch spoke at a meeting this week between Brazilian and Colombian authorities to discuss drug-trafficking in the Amazon, the newspaper said.

Officials drew up a report that will be the basis for an agreement on combatting trafficking to be signed in July. Peru also will be asked to sign. The report called Brazil's border region lawless, blaming a failure by authorities to promote economic and social development, the daily said.

Brazil is installing a $1.2 billion Amazon Surveillance System, which uses radar and aircraft to combat trafficking, as well as forest burning and illegal gold mining.



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SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) A man armed with a revolver barges into a high school classroom, walks over to 18-year-old Elcio de Souza and shoots him dead in a Sao Paulo suburb. The apparent motive: an unpaid gambling debt.

In another city suburb, 14-year-old Maria das Gracas Martins was about to enter school when a single bullet pierced her heart, killing her instantly. The killer reportedly wanted to get back at girls who had picked a fight with his younger sister.

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) Federal police seized 77 pounds of cocaine aboard a Brazilian Air Force cargo plane and are investigating possible links between military personnel and drug traffickers, the Air Force Ministry said Tuesday.

The drugs were found Monday on a Hercules C-130 bound for Palma de Mallorca, Spain, where it was scheduled to pick up spare parts for Brazilian military aircraft, the ministry press office said.

The plane departed from the Rio de Janeiro air base Sunday and made a refueling stop in the northeastern city of Recife, where the drugs were detected by drug-sniffing dogs. The pilot and eight crew members were detained pending further investigation.

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