RN: MP investigates whether orders for attacks were passed on by faction lawyers

Authorities in Rio Grande do Norte are investigating whether the orders for the attacks in several cities in the state came from arrested leaders of the Crime Syndicate faction and were transmitted by the organization’s lawyers.

Since Monday night (13) there have been records of vehicles being burned and shots fired at police bases, in addition to other crimes. The Ministry of Justice sent the National Force to the State at the request of Governor Fátima Bezerra (PT).

One of the main suspects behind the series of attacks is José Kemps Pereira de Araújo, who had been in a penitentiary in greater Natal since January and was transferred to a federal prison on Tuesday (14) under heavy police escort. He is considered the founder of the Crime Syndicate, which runs Rio de Janeiro prisons.

Arrested in January by the Federal Police in Pernambuco, Araújo is facing at least 20 cases involving homicides, criminal organization, drug trafficking and illegal possession of weapons.

The investigated hypothesis is that he may have used the traffic of the lawyers to pass messages to the crimes in the streets.

The “ties”, as the defenders constituted by the prisoners within the criminal group are known, are responsible for keeping communication aligned between the arrested leaders, those who are at liberty and those who function as “workers” in the structure of the criminal organization, according to an investigation by the Public Ministry of Rio Grande do Norte.

Before being transferred, José Kemps Pereira de Araújo was serving his sentence in a cell isolated from the other prisoners, without electricity or contact with the criminal police.

Suspicions regarding the ordering of the attacks fall, according to sources interviewed by the newspaper “O Estado de S. Paulo”, to lawyers and also family members who maintained contact with the prisoner.

This Wednesday (15), the Public Ministry reported that one of the lawyers arrested in Operation Carteiras, in 2022, was sentenced to almost five years in prison.

According to the sentence, the lawyer Mona Lisa Amélia Albuquerque de Lima, considered the “coordinator of the Ties” for claiming to be the head of the message exchange scheme, had her sentence set at four years, nine months and five days in prison. She is considered a member of the faction.

According to investigations, she organized and collected reports from the criminals in custody and provided guidance to the loose members of the organization, as well as transmitting messages and concerns from the heads of the faction who were in custody.