MANAUS, BRAZIL: Brazilian police staged a massive manhunt Tuesday for scores of convicts who escaped during a prison riot that ended with 56 inmates killed by their rivals, many of them beheaded.
In all, 184 inmates escaped from two prisons in Amazonas state as a local drug gang took gruesome revenge on members of a rival gang, authorities said.
Of those, 144 remain at large and 40 have been recaptured, according to the latest count.
Police have set up roadblocks in the area and deployed teams to track down the remaining convicts.
The initial riot at the Anisio Jobim Penitentiary Complex in the state capital, Manaus, was followed by uprisings at two other prisons.
Authorities swiftly brought them under control in a crack-down — but not before 72 had escaped from the nearby Antonio Trindade Penal Institute.
They joined the 112 who had already escaped through a network of tunnels discovered at the Anisio Jobim prison.
Besides the 56 inmates killed at Anisio Jobim, four were killed in fighting between prisoners at the Puraquequara Penitentiary Unit, also in Amazonas state.
Despite the massive manhunt, one alleged escapee appeared to mock the authorities on Facebook.
The man, Brayan Bremer, posted pictures of himself and other purported escapees giving the thumbs-up sign and feasting on fruit against a backdrop of thick vegetation.
“I’m coming, watch out single ladies,” said one post.
Officials have not confirmed the account belongs to an escaped prisoner.
But it went viral in Brazil, getting 14,000 “likes” on Facebook and inspiring instant memes of the prisoner’s face plastered on posters for famous jailbreak movies like “The Shawshank Redemption” and TV series “Prison Break.”
The riot was no laughing matter, though.
Authorities described a horrifying scene of decapitated and brutalized bodies strewn around the prison when they regained control Monday morning after a riot that raged through the night.
Bloodied and burned bodies were stacked in a concrete prison yard and piled in carts, said an AFP photographer at the scene.
The prisoners took 12 guards hostage, who have now been freed.
Authorities blamed the riot on fighting between the Family of the North (FDN), a powerful local gang, and rivals from the First Capital Command (PCC), one of Brazil’s largest gangs.
The PCC’s base is in Sao Paulo, some 2,700 kilometers (1,650 miles) to the southeast.
The riot was the deadliest in more than a decade for Brazil’s underfunded and overcrowded jails.
In October, prison riots triggered by fighting between rival gangs killed 33 people.
And in 1992, a riot in Sao Paulo’s Carandiru prison left 111 people dead.
Prisons are often controlled in Brazil by drug gangs, whose turf wars on the outside are also fought out among inmates.
Overcrowding exacerbates the problem, human rights activists say.
Brazil’s justice ministry said in a 2014 report that the country’s prisons need 50 percent more capacity to handle the current number of inmates: 622,000.
That is the world’s fourth-largest prison population after the US, China and Russia, according to the report.
Brazil chases escaped inmates after bloody prison riot
Brazil chases escaped inmates after bloody prison riot
