Plot to Kidnap Senna Reported
Brazil’s federal police have broken up a plot by a Rio de Janeiro-based gang to kidnap two-time Formula One driving champion Ayrton Senna, officials said Saturday.
The kidnapers planned to abduct Senna within the next month as he traveled the 93 miles from his summer home in the coastal resort of Angra dos Reis to Rio, federal police inspector Jorge Mario Gomes said.
Gomes said Rio’s anti-kidnaping division was tipped off to the plot two weeks ago by an agent who infiltrated a part of the Red Falange gang in the outlying Rio slum district of Jacarezinho. The gang apparently was comprised of 20 men and headed by Antonio (Parazinho) Rosa e Silva, suspected leader of a gang that abducted two female Rio college students in September, Gomes said.
Police discovered maps marked with Senna’s summer house and written instructions for the operation and have the names of at least three suspects. Gomes said no one had yet been arrested.
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