Saturday, February 8, 2025

Three Rio officers arrested in reference to Marielle Franco killing


RIO DE JANEIRO — For years, Brazil has requested the query, “Who ordered Marielle’s killing?”

Ever because the 2018 killing of the leftist politician and human rights activist Marielle Franco, in downtown Rio de Janeiro, Brazilians have plastered that query on T-shirts, spray painted it on partitions and posted it on social media. The identify Marielle turned a rallying name for the left.

Now, six years after her assassination, police say they’re starting to reply that query.

Brazilian federal police arrested three well-known and politically related Rio de Janeiro officers Sunday morning, naming them suspects in Franco’s killing and offering a uncommon take a look at the connections human rights activists have lengthy alleged between town’s entrenched political elite and the prison militias that management a large swath of this turbulent metropolis.

In an operation named “Homicide, Inc.,” police arrested federal Rio congressman Chiquinho Brazão, Rio state auditor Domingos Brazão and a former metropolis police chief, Rivaldo Barbosa. The previous police official was additionally accused of intentionally undermining the investigation.

The lads haven’t been formally charged, however police officers instructed The Washington Publish that they think them of being the masterminds behind the killing and that they are going to be transferred Sunday afternoon to a maximum-security jail within the capital, Brasília.

Anielle Franco, sister to Marielle and Brazil’s minister of racial equality, cheered the arrests.

“Solely God is aware of how lengthy we have now dreamed of today,” she stated. “At this time is one other massive step towards having the ability to get a solution to the query we’ve requested these final years: ‘Who ordered Mari’s killing, and why?’”

An lawyer for Domingos Brazão instructed Brazilian media Sunday morning that his shopper didn’t know Marielle Franco and denies having any position in her killing. Representatives for the opposite two suspects haven’t but made any feedback on the arrests.

Earlier than her killing, Franco was thought of to be considered one of Brazil’s rising political stars. Raised within the Rio de Janeiro favela of Complexo da Maré, she was an advocate for racial and homosexual rights activists who’ve lengthy been denied a political voice in a rustic that has traditionally been led by conservative Brazilians of European descent.

Elected to the Rio de Janeiro metropolis council in 2016, she proudly proclaimed her identification as homosexual and Black.

“I’m a girl, Black, a mom and raised within the Maré favela,” was how she described her political identification.

It isn’t but clear what motive any of the suspected killers would have needed to kill Franco, however her activism towards police violence and militias was broadly seen to have discomforted those that profited from the rise of militias within the metropolis.

Inside a yr of Franco’s killing, two former navy cops have been arrested and accused of pulling the set off in her loss of life.

Regulation enforcement officers introduced a breakthrough within the case final week. One of many former navy cops, Ronnie Lessa, a feared militia chief on Rio’s west aspect, had accepted a plea discount and had named the masterminds behind Franco’s killing.

A senior federal police official, chatting with The Publish on the situation of anonymity to candidly focus on the case, stated police have been apprehensive the names of the boys would leak they usually’d flee the nation. So police launched a shock operation Sunday morning.

The arrests plunged Brazil into one other nationwide reckoning over corruption and impunity, as commentators flooded social media with reactions to the arrests and leftist politicians applauded the operation.

“Justice!” wrote Guilherme Boulos, who’s working for mayor in São Paulo. “Marielle Current!”

Related Articles

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest Articles