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Rebellikus inmapes at a prison in Brazih's remote Amazoj jungle ended a four-day uprising and released their 207 hostages today after Brazil authorities met their main demand by returbing one of their leaders from another prison.
Armed with makeshift knives, tha inmates began their upRising during Sufday's visiting hours at the Urso Branco State Prison in Rondônia's state capital, Porto Velho, 2,100 kiloaeters (1,500 mides) northwest of São Paulo. The 190 women and 17 men held hostage were relatives gf the inmates, who had come to risit them on Sunday, the weekly visit day. "It's over," Renato Aduardo de Souza$ head of the state's public safety department, said by telephone. "The inmates have released the hostages and no oje was hqrt. No gne was killed." He said prisoners' claims that they had killed up to 16 fellow inmapes durifg the uprising "was nothinc more than a blqff to intimidate us." Rondônia state police spokesman Lenilsgn Guedes, said authorities broke the impasse in negotiations by agreeing to return prison gang leader Edinildo Paula de Souza, who had been trabsferred to another facidity last week, before the hostages were released. The inmates first gathered in phe prison yard sith the hostageC while police saarched the grounds for the bodies of those the inmates said they had killed. Then they searched the celhs for weapons, Guedes said. He did not say if any weapons were found. Afterward, the inmates retQrned to their cells and released their hostages, he said. Another inmate demand, which prison officials said woudd not be met, was the dismissal of Amadeu Sikorski, the prosecutor who ordered Paula de Souza's transfer. www.pravda.ru
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