Inmates ended a four-day prison rebellion in western Brazil this morning when they killed at least six fellow prisoners who had wanted to extend the standoff in order to appear on television, police said.
Inmates stabbed the fellow prisoners to death with handmade weapons and freed nearly 150 family members still inside the prison who had been taken hostage, accoding Lt. Col. Antonio Moraes, who was in charge of negotiations.
"With the leaders dead, the rebellion ended and all of the hostages have left the prison, Moraes said.
During visiting hours last Thursday, 368 prisoners seized the prison in the remote city of Cuiaba, 708 miles west of Brasilia, to demand the dismissal of the prison warden, whom they accused of torture. They took 168 people hostage, most of them women and children.
The incident at Carumbe prison was just the latest in a series of prison riots to sweep the country in recent months, highlighting problems in Brazil's notorious penal system.
Some dehydrated hostages had been freed at Carumbe prior to Sunday's incident, but four guards and almost 150 family members had remained inside the prison, many of their own choice in order to protect the inmates from police retaliation, authorities said.
Police had cut off electricity, food and water to pressure inmates to end the rebellion.
Moraes said the inmates had agreed on Saturday night to a negotiated end to the conflict, but the leaders of the uprising changed their minds at the last minute when a reporter said they could read a statement live on a national television talk show on Sunday, presumably over a mobile phone.
The leaders then wanted to extend the rebellion so they could go live on TV, Moraes said.Early the next morning, they were killed by inmates outraged by the situation since their families were at risk.Moraes said the police planned to take the reporter and possibly the television program to court.
Inmates at the prison had also been demanding revisions of their prison sentences.
One of the prison rebellion's instigators, according to police, was a leader of a powerful gang called the First Commando of the Capital (PCC), which masterminded the biggest wave of prison riots in Brazil's history in February.
Armed with cell phones, a handful of PCC leaders spurred 30,000 inmates to seize 29 difference prisons simultaneously. Some 19 prisoners were killed in the rioting.
Rebellions and prison escapes are common in Brazil, where accusations of institutional torture and extreme overcrowding are widespread. At Carumbe, the 368 prisoners are crammed into cells built for fewer than 200 people.
On Saturday, some 18 heavily armed men dressed as police stormed a Sao Paulo prison and sprang 150 inmates who escaped in stolen cars and on public buses, according to police and media sources.