A drug lord so powerful that he had orchestrated a wave of violence in Rio de Janeiro from his prison cell was transferred to federal custody on Friday after a state penitentiary refused to keep him. A judge ruled last week that Luiz Fernando da Costa, who is known by his nickname -- Fernandinho Beira-Mar (Freddy Seashore) -- be freed from strict solitary confinement, in which he was barred from virtually all contact with others, in a maximum security state prison near Sao Paulo. Brazilian law dictates that prisoners can only be kept in such maximum security confinement for one year, but Beira-Mar had spent nearly two years in such conditions. Sao Paulo state said it would not keep Beira-Mar in its prisons under any easier conditions so he was transferred to a federal police detention center in the capital, Brasilia. Beira-Mar is so feared that the president had to plead with state governors to find a prison for him in 2003, after he organized the violence in Rio from his cell there using a mobile telephone and help from other inmates. The army had to be called in to safeguard the city.
