São Paulo gang prompts anti-terrorist legislation
As news spread that the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) is planning to define the crime of terrorism in the penal code, prompted by the two recent waves of attacks by the prison-based PCC gang in São Paulo, the gang staged a new series of pinprick raids and warned that it might unleash violent actions 'of hitherto unseen proportions'. This has strengthened the arguments of those who have been demanding legal instruments to strike back.
The authorities of São Paulo had been warned by police intelligence that the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) was planning a series of actions, including the kidnapping of a public figure, on 30 August, eve of the gang's anniversary. When the government ordered the immediate transfer of 76 inmates from the Presidente Bernardes prison to that of Avaré, orders went out from the gang leaders to bring forward the attacks, targeting banks and the police.
These took place on 28-29 August. It was a victimless, small-scale 'offensive' in which cash dispensers were torched and shots were fired from moving vehicles at police vehicles and premises. Simultaneously, leaflets were distributed throughout São Paulo (dozens of teenagers were hired for the task), in which the PCC warned of a new, much larger wave of violence if the authorities did not take action to end 'ill treatment' of inmates in the state's prisons.
As the latest PCC raids were getting under way, the newspaper Folha de São Paulo revealed that the ruling PT was considering a package of public security policy proposals, among which was the definition of the offence of terrorism and the establishment of stiff penalties for it. The initiative, party sources confirmed, was prompted by the PCC raids in May and July, which left claimed some 200 lives.
The text (still provisional) cited by the newspaper includes among its proposals 'the categorisation of terrorist offences, the adoption of measures to increase the protection of secret information, and the categorisation of criminal organisation [as an offence]'.
The sociologist José Vicente Tavares, who heads the team working on the public security proposals, told Folha, 'Much of the discussion on this was a reaction to the events in São Paulo: many people believe that what happened there was terrorism.' In fact, a number of personalities, among them retired Major André Luís Woloszyn, a strategic intelligence expert at the Escola Nacional de Guerra (the national war college), have been publicly advocating that actions such as those carried out by the PCC should be legally considered terrorism.
The constitution repudiates terrorism and considers it an offence whose perpetrators cannot be granted bail. Woloszyn, however, argues that this is not enough: what is needed is a clear categorisation of the offence, a definition which makes it clear what is terrorism and what is not. 'Otherwise,' he says, 'terrorism does not exist.'
At present, the only legal provision for the punishment of terrorism is contained in the 1983 national security law. Article 20 classifies as a criminal offence punishable with prison terms of three to ten years 'the practice of [...] acts of terrorism for reasons of political dissent or to obtain funds destined to support clandestine or subversive organisations.' At least four draft laws attempting to define terrorism have been floating around for some time in congress.