SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP):
INMATES AT a prison in Brazil's remote Amazon jungle were holding more than 200 people hostage, demanding the return of their leader from another prison. And while authorities agreed to bring him back, both sides remained at an impasse yesterday, waiting for the other to make the first move.
Armed with makeshift knives, the inmates began their uprising during Sunday's visiting hours at the Urso Branco State Prison in Rondonia's state capital, Porto Velho, some 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo.
The same prison was the site of a bloody five-day uprising in April 2004 that left 14 inmates dead, many of them hacked to death and tossed from the prison's roof. Prisoners held hostage about 170 relatives then, most of them women.
This time, the inmates said they would release the hostages after one of their leaders - Edinildo Paula de Souza, who had been transferred to another facility last week - was returned to Urso Branco.
Paula de Souza escaped from Urso Branco on November 24 through a tunnel he had dug in the prison's vegetable garden. He was recaptured December 21 and sent the next day to the Nova Mamore prison some 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Urso Branco.
"We agreed to return Edinildo as soon as the hostages were released and after a complete search for weapons and drugs," Renato Eduardo de Souza, head of the state's public safety depart-ment, said by telephone on Tuesday. "But they refused, demanding that Edinildo be returned first."
Another inmate demand, which prison officials said would not be met, was the dismissal of the prosecutor who ordered Paula de Souza's transfer.
