Amazon outlaws Jailbreak exposes expansion of Brazil's top crime factions

After nearly two months on the run, the Amazon outlaws nicknamed Hammerhead and Armadillo might have felt they were nearing the home straight-albeit a long and muddy one.

- Tom Phillips, Tiago Rogero

Just ahead over the Tocantins river lay the Trans-Amazonian highway, a rundown and poorly-patrolled jungle track that cuts more than 1,200 miles east to west across the largest rainforest on Earth. After completing that gruelling journey, the fugitives reportedly hoped to sneak across the border into Bolivia, far from the long hand of the Brazilian law.

Then, at about 1.30pm last Thursday, federal police scuppered their audacious plan, intercepting the runaways as they approached the bridge into the Amazon city of Marabá. "He panicked and started swerving all over the shop," one officer said of Hammerhead, a convicted killer whose real name is Rogério Mendonça.

Shots were fired. The men were captured. And one of the most dramatic manhunts in recent Brazilian history was over, 51 days after the pair had somehow broken out of a maximum-security federal prison in the north-eastern city of Mossoró. "They're going back to the place they came from," celebrated the justice minister, Ricardo Lewandowski, hailing "a victory of the Brazilian state".