SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) – A kidnapped television reporter from Brazil’s dominant television network was released unharmed yesterday morning by the gang that has spread urban terror throughout South America’s largest city, Brazil’s Globo TV said.

After being held for about 40 hours by the First Capital Command gang, Guilherme Portanova was driven in the trunk of a car to a neighbourhood several kilometres (miles) near the offices of Brazil’s most watched television channel and set free.

The release of Portanova, 30, came after Globo broadcast a video with the gang calling for improvements in the nation’s troubled prison system.

“At no moment were they violent and they said they only wanted to have their demands aired (on TV) and if their demands were not put on the air they could take other measures,” Portanova told reporters in Sao Paulo. He added that the kidnappers never threatened his life during his time in captivity.

Portanova and a technician were kidnapped near Globo’s Sao Paulo offices Saturday morning by armed men, and the technician was released earlier along with the video, recorded on a DVD.

The gang, known here as the PCC, is influential throughout Sao Paulo, and is run by its imprisoned leaders. It is blamed for launching three waves of attacks on police, government buildings, banks and public buses over the last four months.

Globo interrupted its regular programming early Sunday to broadcast the video, with an armed and hooded man reading a PCC statement criticising the prison system and demanding reviews of sentences.

The PCC said this was “the only way we found to transmit an announcement to society and the governing officials”.

Globo said in a statement later Sunday that it only showed the video after consulting with the Belgium-based International News Safety Institute and the risk-assessment company called The AKE Group, saying it was advised to make the broadcast because of the urgency of the situation.

Media groups criticised the kidnapping as setting a dangerous precedent.