C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BRASILIA 000504
SIPDIS
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
FOR WHA, WHA/BSC, AND S/CT
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/18/2018
TAGS: PTER, PGOV, PREL, KCRM, ETTC, EFIN, ASEC, AR, BR
SUBJECT: COUNTERTERRORISM IN BRAZIL: ONE STEP FORWARD, ONE
BACK (PART 2 OF 2)
REF: A. BRASILIA 000440
B. BRASILIA 000579
C. SAO PAULO 000991
D. SAO PAULO 000532
Classified By: Deputy Chief of Mission Phil Chicola. Reasons 1.4 B and
D
1. (C) Summary: In November of last year the Government of
Brazil announced that it was backtracking on its effort to
introduce counterterrorism (CT) legislation after a
years-long effort by a working group within the Presidency's
Institutional Security Cabinet (GSI) to coordinate the
drafting of the initiative within the government. Although
they now seek to downplay the importance of having such
legislation, prior to the reversal GOB officials claimed that
new anti-terrorism legislation was necessary to improve its
legal regime--which currently does not treat terrorist
activities, terrorism financing, or support of terrorism as
crimes. Some news reports have suggested that President
Lula's powerful chief of staff quashed the proposed
legislation, which had been attacked by some social activists
and advocacy groups who feared it could be used against them
and compared it to military era repression. The media and
political silence that greeted the government's reversal has
exposed a vacuum on matters pertaining to terrorism among the
elites whose support would be required to overcome GOB
resistance. As a result, our efforts to put this legislation
back on Brazil's agenda will be an uphill climb. End Summary.
2. (U) This cable is the second of two that looks at the
Brazilian government's latest actions to counter terrorist
activities. The first touched on Brazil's reform of its
intelligence and counterterrorism structure.
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No Crime Without a Law to Define It
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3. (U) In 2004, the GOB formed a working group within GSI,
the Presidency's office in charge of coordinating
intelligence, counternarcotics and national security, charged
with examining Brazilian laws related to terrorism, as well
as the way the government was structured to deal with the
challenges posed by international terrorists (ref A). Prior
to this effort, Brazilian government officials and outside
observers had concluded that Brazilian laws dealing with
terrorism were ambiguous and needed updating to account for
modern realities (refs B and C). Under Brazilian law,
terrorist acts, their financing, and activities supporting
terrorist acts are not considered crimes. Both the Brazilian
constitution and the National Security Act (Public Law 7.170
of 1983), which defines crimes against national security,
criminalize acts of terrorism in general. However, because
the National Security Act harkens back to the military
regime, Embassy contacts have indicated that it is highly
unlikely the government would ever use it to charge someone
with a crime related to a terrorist activity (Ref B). In
addition, because terrorism under that law is proscribed
without being typified, even in the unlikely case someone
attempted to test the prevailing wisdom on the applicability
of a military-era national security law to charge someone
with the crime of attempting to commit an act of terrorism,
they probably would be unable to do so. The Act specifically
proscribes criminal acts that could be considered acts of
terrorism, such as sabotage and bombings, but only as
distinct crimes from terrorism. Because of this, terrorist
activities consisting of defined crimes under the law could
not be charged explicitly as terrorism.
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Domestic Politics to Blame
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4. (U) As soon as news reports started surfacing in early
2007 that GSI was about to wrap up its work, the government
started coming under fire from opponents of the bill. The
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influential Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB, the Brazilian
bar association) criticized the government for pushing
legislation that was, according to OAB's president Cezar
Britto, in reality a thinly veiled move to criminalize the
actions of social movements and those fighting for equality.
Forced on the defensive, several high-ranking GSI officials
publicly suggested that any anti-terrorism legislation would
be rarely used and that judges would have discretion in
applying it. Then in late November 2007, the government
unceremoniously announced that it would not introduce the
legislation to Congress.
5. (C) In a meeting with Poloff, Assistant Secretary Jose
Antonio de Macedo Soares of the Secretariat for Monitoring
and Institutional Studies, at GSI (and Ministry of External
Relations representative to GSI, where he holds the rank of
minister) and GSI advisor Janer Tesch Hosken Alvarenga
explained that it was impossible to reach consensus within
the government on how to define terrorism. Asked to confirm
a news item in the daily newspaper Correio Braziliense noting
that Minister Dilma Rousseff (chief of staff to President
Lula in the Casa Civil) had quashed the proposal, Alvarenga
equivocated, suggested that several "clients" had weighed in,
including the Ministry of Justice. In the end, he did not
deny the news report, stating that the decision had been a
"political" one.
6. (SBU) A Brazilian War College analyst on strategic
intelligence and author of numerous articles on
counterterrorism topics, Andre Luis Soloszyn, went farther,
asserting to poloff that the Correio story sounded very
credible to him, and that the GSI working group was a
smokescreen for the government to demonstrate to the US and
the international community that it was taking the issue of
counterterrorism seriously. Soloszyn noted that there was
little chance that this particular government, stacked with
leftist militants who had been the object of military
dictatorship-era laws designed to repress
politically-motivated violence, was going to put forth a bill
that would criminalize the actions of groups it sympathizes
with, such as the Landless Movement (MST), for "there is no a
way to write an anti-terrorism legislation that excludes the
actions of the MST".
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An Idea Whose Time Has Come(and Gone
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7. (C) Asked if there was a possibility the legislation could
come back some time in the future, both Soares and Alvarenga
were pessimistic. Commenting on the enormously complex
nature of the issue, Alvarenga noted that discussions of
terrorism within Brazilian society remain at an immature
stage, with few experts on the topic and very few people
interested. Soares added that people within and outside the
government find the possibility of a terrorist attack taking
place on Brazilian soil so improbable that they are incapable
of giving the issue much attention.
8. (SBU) Soloszyn echoed these comments, indicating that he
is one of the few individuals to focus on the issue of
terrorism outside the government. Within the government, the
story is not much different, he added, and virtually no one
in Congress was focused on the issue. Most legislators and
general public are so in the grip of the "it can't happen
here" mentality that they lack any idea of terrorist tactics,
the concept of support networks, the threat of homegrown
terrorism, and exploitation of soft targets. According to
Soloszyn, the issue of potential pockets of Islamic extremism
among segments of Brazil's large Muslim community is likewise
an unstudied subject among specialists, and unthinkable as a
proposition among the public at large. The Brazilian mind
even among the highest echelons of the government, he added,
can't get past its own cliches about the multicultural
paradise that is Brazil.
9. (SBU) According to him, the only factor that could change
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this indifference is another wave of violence like that
unleashed by the First Capital Command (PCC) in Sao Paulo in
2006 (ref D). Terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists is
too remote for Brazilians to worry about. The only way they
are going to move on this, he added, is when it affects them
on a daily basis. (Comment: In the immediate aftermath of
the PCC's violence in 2006, President Lula called their
actions terrorism, and made noises about finally getting some
anti-terrorism legislation on the books. End comment.)
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"We have to Stop this Farce"
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10. (C) In his conversation with poloff, Soares dismissed the
importance of the government's reversal, arguing that the
success of any potential terrorist attack against the Israeli
Embassy in Brasilia is not going to be determined by whether
there is a law on the books outlawing terrorism. Brazil,
according to him, has excellent working relationships with
other countries, he noted, including with the US and Israel.
Soares added that he hoped to continue cooperating with the
US, despite what he described as the "farcical" elements
within the bilateral CT dialogue: Soares did not miss the
opportunity to repeat the oft-heard complaint by GOB
officials about comments on the part of USG officials
suggesting the Triborder Area (TBA) remains a top concern
with regard to potential terrorist activity, which then
prompt the obligatory Brazilian demands for evidence of such
activity. He called the exercise pointless, since, in his
words, "we all know that your officials based their
statements on information we provide the US". Soares also
criticized Argentine officials for their comments linking the
TBA to the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, calling their
accusations "silly" and "baseless".
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Comment:
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11. (C) After various Brazilian government officials had
warned of the flawed nature of the Brazilian legal system, it
is unfortunate, though not surprising, to hear GSI officials
now argue that there is no need for the GOB to improve
Brazil's legal regime to make it illegal to commit, finance,
plan, or support terrorist acts. Although we cannot confirm
definitively that the Casa Civil quashed the initiative for
political or ideological reasons, it is certainly plausible.
Outside of some agencies focused on security issues, this
government evinces very little interest in terrorism issues,
much less on legislation its base has no interest in seeing
enacted and that would require significant political capital
to push through Congress. Likewise, with little knowledge or
enthusiasm within Congress, there is no one to take up the
mantle there either. As a result, the initiative has become
an orphan of Brazil's current political realities. For the
moment, any effort to suppress terrorism, its financing, or
activities supporting terrorist activities will have to
continue for the foreseeable future to follow the "Al Capone"
approach of taking down terrorists based on customs
violations, tax fraud, and other crimes that unfortunately
also carry less jail time. While this approach can work, it
is not a substitute for giving police and judges the
additional legal tools that the international community has
agreed are necessary in the fight against terrorism and nor
is it a substitute for institutionalizing counterterrorism
within the Brazilian legal system. Taking Brazil's reform of
its CT structure (ref A) together with its backtracking CT
legislation once again shows a mixed picture of Brazil's
overall CT effort at the policy level. Furthermore, the low
standing CT holds as an issue among Brazil's elite casts some
doubt as to whether the potentially useful reform of ABIN
will actually materialize. Over the next months, Mission
will consult with Washington agencies as we review our
strategy for increasing Brazilian attention to
counter-terrorism.
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12. (C) Comment, cont: On a separate note, we found Soares'
admission that Brazil provides the bulk of the intelligence
on matters related to CT to be highly atypical, although it
sheds some light on a question that has long-puzzled the
Mission. That is, whether policy-level officials,
particularly at Itamaraty, where they tend to be most
disinclined to accept the suggestion that there may be
terrorist elements active in their territory, receive the
same information from Brazil's intelligence elements as the
U.S. receives. Although we cannot answer definitively,
Soares comments would suggest that to be the case and that,
despite their denials, they recognize the potential problems
Brazil faces. Another possibility is that they have access
to the same information but, either because the information
would be inadmissible in a Brazilian court or because it does
not meet a presumed higher threshold of what constitutes
terrorist-related activity, they technically do not consider
it evidence of such activity. This means they are either
playing games or they are defining terrorism out of Brazil.
Neither interpretation presents a flattering picture of the
seriousness with which the senior levels of the Brazilian
government treat the issue of terrorism, but both are
consistent with what we have seen over the last several years
from a government that considers CT a low priority. End
comment.
SOBEL