NATAL, Brazil — Guilherme Figueiredo da Silva knew he was going to die.

In a phone call from the Alcacuz State Penitentiary, where the 36-year-old was serving a sentence for a drug conviction, he told his father that a rebellion was being planned but that authorities were doing nothing to prevent it.

Two days later, his cellblock became a slaughterhouse, as gang members in another block attacked with knives and guns for two days, decapitating many of their victims and setting their bodies on fire. The official death toll was 26, though survivors and inmates’ families say it was much higher.

Read the rest of this story on the Los Angeles Times website.

By Jill Langlois

Photos and video by Victor Moriyama for the Los Angeles Times

Originally published in the Los Angeles Times on August 30, 2017.