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Pakistan has released nine members of the Taliban from prison in hopes they will help negotiate peace in Afghanistan, a senior Afghan peace negotiator said. They are to receive safe passage back to Afghanistan, Salahuddin Rabbani, chairman of Afghanistan High Peace Council, told reporters in Kabul Saturday.

A senior Pakistani intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the release, indicating that many of the prisoners were old-guard Taliban, ranking members from generations past. Two were once ministers in the former Taliban government before the U.S. invaded the country in 2001, he said. The rest were either former government officials or low- to mid-level commanders. The peace council has attempted to forge peace between the Taliban, the Afghan government and Western powers. It supports Kabul's call to the Taliban to cut its links to al Qaeda.

The prisoner release coincided with a recent three-day visit by an Afghan delegation led by Rabbani to Islamabad, which sat down with Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and religious leaders to solicit their support for the peace process in Afghanistan. The Afghans have requested the discharge of more Taliban, who Rabbani said have agreed to support peace negotiations, and hope that this first release was the just the beginning.The senior Pakistani intelligence official believes more releases are likely, but he is skeptical the released Taliban prisoners will be effective in peace negotiations due to generational conflicts.

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Marta Umbelina pulled up in front of her house with her 11-year-old daughter. When she stepped out of the car, she was shot 10 times in the back. Umbelina was an office worker at Sao Paulo's Military Police Northern Command -- and she is one of nearly 100 cops murdered in Sao Paulo this year, roughly 50 percent higher than 2011. Most were ambushed while off duty, part of a deadly battle between police and Brazil's biggest criminal gang, the First Command of the Capital or PCC by its Portuguese acronym.

"Marta was my friend, my colleague, she knew everything about me," said Simone Mello, a police officer who worked with Marta at a desk job."Why her? Why Marta? We're just very sad," she said.

In a bid to rein in the PCC, Sao Paulo launched Operation Saturation at the end of October. The government sent at least 500 police troops into the city's biggest shantytown Paraisopolis, or Paradise City. They arrested dozens of alleged gang leaders, confiscated arms and drugs and even found a list with the names and addresses of 40 military police on it. 

But police aren't the only casualties in this escalating war. The number of homicides in Sao Paulo has jumped to almost 1,000 so far this year, largely concentrated in favelas or slums. For January to October 2011 there were 869 homicides, according to Sao Paulo government figures.Some police are also being investigated for execution-style murders.

"Poor neighborhoods are caught in the crossfire," said Camila Nunes Dias, a professor at the Center for the Study of Violence at Sao Paulo University. "They suffer the consequences and we know that a lot of innocent people are being killed."

She said she believes the spiral of violence began in May when the Sao Paulo state government took a more aggressive stance against the PCC and drug gangs.

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