The Brazilian police arrested this Sunday the alleged “intellectual authors” of the murder of Rio de Janeiro councilor Marielle Franco in 2018, an essential step to elucidate the crime that caused outrage in Brazil and abroad.
The action in Rio fulfilled “three preventive detention orders and 12 search and arrest orders,” and targeted “the intellectual authors” of the crime of Franco and his driver Anderson Gomes, The Federal Police (PF) reported in a statement.
The three detainees are the advisor of the Court of Auditors of Rio, Domingos Brazao; his brother, federal deputy Chiquinho Brazao; and the former head of the Civil Police of Rio Rivaldo Barbosa, according to statements to journalists by lawyers and relatives of the victims.
This Sunday's operation occurs a few days after the justice system endorsed the confession of one of the suspects in carrying out the murder, who was already detained.
This is the testimony of Ronnie Lessa, a former member of the Rio Military Police who is imprisoned on suspicion of committing the murders. Lessa would have given the authorities the names of the alleged intellectual authors of the crime, whose motivations are still a big question.
In 2019, the Prosecutor's Office stated that Franco had been “the victim of a summary execution due to his political activity.” and to the causes he defended.” But other motives were not excluded.
This Sunday, Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, considered the “political nature” of the councilwoman's murder to be “proven.”
“We are very clear” who were the “executors” and also who ordered “that hateful, disgusting crime, which was a crime of a political nature,” the minister declared at a press conference.
The case gained momentum in July 2023, when the alleged driver of the car, also former military police officer Elcio Queiroz, confessed his and Lessa's participation in the crime.
Because of that statement, the police arrested former firefighter Maxwell Simoes Correa in Rio, who would have been in charge of monitoring Franco and hiding the weapons from the attack.
Ubiratan Guedes, Domingos Brazao's lawyer, told journalists at the PF headquarters that his client “did not know Marielle” and that the accusation is “inadmissible.” Meanwhile, Alexandre Dumans, defender of the Civil Police Union, said that he will accompany Barbosa in the process.
Black, born in a favela, defender of minorities and critic of police violence, Marielle Franco was murdered along with her driver on March 14, 2018. Both were shot from another vehicle in downtown Rio.
The councilor, from the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), was 38 years old, she was lesbian and all His political activity was dedicated to the defense of human rights. and the fight against the mafia groups that control dozens of neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro, to which the detainees are presumed to be linked.
The arrest of former police chief Barbosa, who received the relatives the day after the murders, surprised the councilor's inner circle. “My daughter trusted him and his work. And he told me that it was a matter of honor to clarify” the crime, Marielle's mother, Marinete Silva, told GloboNews.
At the PF headquarters, Monica Benicio, Franco's widow, considered the inclusion of the former police chief among the suspects a “big surprise.” After six years, Benicio thanked the “political will” to advance the investigations.
The case has been under the direction of the Federal Police since February 2023, after the inauguration of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The councilor's family celebrated the operation as a “historic day.”
Today is a big step forward to get the answers to what we have asked ourselves so much in recent years: who ordered the killing of Mari and why?
Anielle Franco, Marielle's sister and Minister of Racial Equality, wrote in But there is still “a long way to go,” she said.
Investigators believe that Lessa and Queiroz have a relationship with paramilitary militias, denounced by Franco. These emerged about four decades ago, made up of former police officers, retired soldiers, firefighters and others, as a “self-defense” against drug trafficking gangs. But they became mafias that demanded tribute in exchange for that “protection.”
This Sunday, the Minister of Justice highlighted that, in the report prepared by the Federal Police that led to the arrests, There are “clear indications” that the intellectual authors were in “conflict” with Franco, due to his actions against attempts by mafia groups to seize public lands for “their real estate operations.”
According to Lewandowski, “Marielle's group had a strong presence” in the municipal chamber “in defense of the right to housing, cadastral regularization” and the social use of the land claimed by these mafias, known as “militias” and made up of former police officers. .
“Everything was against what these mafia groups, with strong political ties, wanted,” said the director of the Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues, responsible for the investigation, at the same press conference.
AFP and EFE
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