1. Outwardly at least, both Nova Ordem and the PCC claim to fight such human rights abuses.

2. Brazil‘s media describes Nova Ordem as the political wing of the faction, something Barbosa rejects. ‘Nova Ordem is here is to defend the whole prison population,‘ he says. ‘It is for everyone – not just the PCC.‘ What is clear is that Nova Ordem carries considerable clout with what is described as Brazil‘s largest criminal organisation.

3. Nova Ordem, he claims, is engaged in the battle against torture and violence in the state‘s hellish prison system.

4. The PCC – in a nod to Rio de Janeiro drug faction the Comando Vermelho, in many ways the grandfather of Brazilian organised crime – employs the strapline Paz, justica e liberdade (Peace, justice and liberty). Nova Ordem, on the other hand, uses the red, white and blue colours of the French revolution on its eagle–shaped logo.

5. Those who have met the group‘s well–spoken leader, Marcola, describe him as an intelligent, chillingly poetic man, whose reading list is said to include Sun Tzu‘s The Art of War, Machiavelli‘s The Prince and Paulo Coelho‘s The Alchemist And like all guerrilla groups worth their salt, the PCC even boasts its own marketing department, which seeks to portray the group not as a criminal faction but as either a human rights group fighting to improve the lives of Sao Paulo‘s 142,000–strong prison population, or a rebel army leading a revolucao dos pobres (revolution of the poor). One man accused of being at the forefront of this marketing campaign is Ivan Raymondi Barbosa, a former police investigator who himself spent five months in a Sao Paulo jail (he was implicated in an international smuggling ring) and who now heads an NGO called Nova Ordem.