One of Brazil’s biggest drug traffickers leaves prison

Drug trafficker Celso Luiz Rodrigues, known as Celsinho da Vila Vintém and considered one of the most dangerous drug traffickers in Brazil in the 1990s, left prison on Wednesday on a court order after 20 years in prison.

Celsinho de Vila Vintém, one of the founders of the criminal organization “Amigos dos Amigos,” whose mafia controlled drug trafficking in several favelas of Rio de Janeiro, will stand trial in the only case still pending against him.

The drug trafficker had been in prison since 2002, although he had first served time in jail in 1994 and had already served all sentences up to 30 years to which he had been sentenced for murder, drug trafficking, and bank robbery.

He has now benefited from a police operation in September that identified two notorious police commissioners who, in 2017, ordered an invasion of rival shooters in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, to help allies take over drug outlets in the slum.

Celsinho was serving a 15-year prison sentence for the armed invasion of Rocinha after being accused of ordering it from prison as head of Amigos dos Amigos. This rival mafia controlled the favela.

“They set a trap to accuse me of this crime,” he said in brief statements to the press as he left Lemos Brito prison, one of the sections of the Gericinó prison complex in western Rio de Janeiro, accompanied by his lawyers.

“I am finally getting out of prison. I have served my entire sentence. I was never paroled, nor did I receive any other benefits.”

“Now, I hope they allow me to live in peace. I have nowhere to go; I have no home, everything I had I lost. ” I want to live in peace and away from crime,” he said.

Celsinho da Vintém made two spectacular escapes from prison, the first in 1994, shortly after his incarceration, and the second in 1998 when he took advantage of being transferred to a hospital after being shot in the arm to escape.

In 2002, he survived a violent fight between rival drug gangs sharing Bangú Prison in which four leaders of his organization were killed.

In 2014, due to his dangerousness and the discovery that his followers were planning a rescue operation, he was transferred to a maximum security prison in the state of Rondonia in the Amazon, where he remained for four years before returning to Rio de Janeiro.