Brazilian police arrest new suspect in killing of Marielle Franco (assassination)
Justice minister says Brazil is close to solving ‘horrendous’ 2018 slaying of Rio de Janeiro councilwoman.
An image of Marielle Franco is projected onto a building in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on March 14, 2023, during a tribute to mark the fifth anniversary of her killing [File: Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
Published On 24 Jul 2023
24 Jul 2023
Authorities in Brazil have arrested another suspect in connection with the 2018 murder of popular Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver, the justice minister confirmed.
A preventive arrest warrant and seven search and seizure warrants were served, Justice Minister Flavio Dino said during a press conference in the capital, Brasilia, on Monday.
The man arrested was named as former firefighter Maxwell Simoes Correia, and he is suspected of hiding the weapons used by the ex-police suspects who are on trial over the shooting, Dino said.
“We are close to solving this horrendous crime,” he said.
The killing of Franco, a Black, openly gay and progressive councilwoman born in a poor Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood, sent shock waves across Brazil and spurred mass protests calling for accountability and justice.
On the five-year anniversary of the killing in March, Amnesty International urged Brazil’s left-wing president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to establish an “international mechanism of independent experts” to support the local authorities investigating the case.
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A rising star in the Socialism and Liberty Party, Franco was an outspoken critic of police killings of poor Rio residents. Investigators believe her killing to be a political assassination carried out by paid hit men.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/24/brazilian-police-arrest-new-suspect-in-killing-of-marielle-franco
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Wikipedia:
The assassination of Marielle Franco, councilwoman of Rio de Janeiro for the PSOL, was a crime which took place on March 14, 2018, in Estácio, the central region of the city. The criminals were in a car that pulled up alongside the councilwoman's car and fired several shots, which also killed the driver. The investigation conducted by the authorities pointed to political motivations.[1]
Description
Marielle arrived at the Casa das Pretas, on rua dos Inválidos, in Lapa, to mediate a debate promoted by the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) with young black women, around 7:00pm. According to images obtained by the police, a Cobalt with a Nova Iguaçu license plate, a city in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro, was parked near the venue. Around 11:00 pm, Marielle left the Casa das Pretas with an aide and a driver, and was soon followed by a car of the same model that had been parked near the site. Around 11:30 PM, on Joaquim Paralhes Street, in Estácio, a vehicle pulled up next to Marielle's car fired thirteen shots. Nine hit the car frame and four hit the windows. The councilwoman was hit by three shots to the head and one to the neck[2] and the driver was shot at least three times in the back, killing them both. The aide was hit by shrapnel, taken to hospital and later released. Police stated that they believe her car was pursued for about four kilometers. The executioners fled the scene without taking any property.[3]
Investigation
Images taken from local cameras revealed that a second vehicle might’ve provided cover for the criminals who fired the shots. In addition, other images showed two men sitting inside a vehicle for two hours at the site of an event that the councilwoman had attended shortly before. According to the police, the ammunition used, a 9mm caliber, cannot be sold to civilians in general. Rede Globo reported that the ammunition belonged to a batch sold to the Federal Police, a fact confirmed by the Civil Police.[4][5] Investigators believed that the councilwoman was followed from the Lapa event, for four kilometers, until she passed through a place of less traffic, where the attack took place.[4]
Police Chief Rivaldo Barbosa was investigating the possibility of an execution, since the passengers' belongings were not taken by the shooters and the councilwoman was an activist in poor communities, having been active in defense of the human rights of the residents of these localities, especially black people and women, and had even denounced killings by police officers. On the Saturday before the crime, Marielle had denounced on social networks[6] the 41st Military Police Battalion, in Acari, which had been indicated by the Public Security Institute as the deadliest in the previous five years.[7]
Forensics discovered that the 9mm caliber ammunition that killed the Rio de Janeiro councilwoman was from the same batch as part of the projectiles used in the largest massacre in the state of São Paulo. The murders of seventeen people occurred in Barueri and Osasco Greater São Paulo, on August 13, 2015. Three military police officers and a civil guard were convicted of these killings. According to the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro, this lot had been sold to the Federal Police of Brasília by the company Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos on December 29, 2006. Technical analysis also revealed that the ammunition was original. That is, it was not reloaded because the primer, which causes the propellant to ignite, was original. The Federal Police opened an investigation to determine the origin of the ammunition and how it arrived in Rio de Janeiro.[8]
More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Marielle_Franco
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Looking back at her legacy.
GREGORY SCRUGGS MARCH 30, 2018
The late Marielle Franco, second from left. (Credit: Institute for Transportation and Development Policy)
Alittle over two weeks have passed since Rio de Janeiro city councilor and former Rio Human Rights Commission member Marielle Franco was shot and killed along with her driver in what authorities believe was a targeted assassination. Since then, protests and memorials have engulfed Brazil in honor of the 38-year-old political rarity: an openly queer, black single mother, born and raised in a favela.
The hashtag #MariellePresente has gone viral and black cultural luminaries like singer Janelle Monae, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, model Naomi Campbell, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Black Lives Matter movement co-founders Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi have signed an open letter calling for a full and independent investigation into her death.
The global outcry over Franco’s death has rightly focused on her criticism of the police on human rights grounds. She had been serving on a city council committee looking into the recent federally-ordered military takeover of the Rio de Janeiro state police department and had called out a specific police battalion on her Facebook page for three murders in the Acarí favela three days before unknown gunmen tailed her vehicle as she left an event on women’s empowerment. Brazilian media has reported that the ammunition found at the scene was sold to the federal police in 2006, furthering suspicions that the police were behind her killing. But Franco also doggedly pursued another topic in her all-too-brief term in office: public transit.
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The advisor says Franco recounted how sometimes she and other passengers would have to disembark and push the buses when they stalled.
More:
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/rio-city-councilor-marielle-franco-was-also-a-transit-activist
By Steven Grattan
July 24, 20239:56 AM CDT
Updated 2 hours ago
SAO PAULO, July 24 (Reuters) - Brazilian police on Monday arrested another suspect in connection with the 2018 murder of popular Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver, acting on a plea bargain confession by an arrested suspect.
A preventive arrest warrant and seven search and seizure warrants were served, Justice Minister Flavio Dino confirmed in a press conference in the capital Brasilia.
The man arrested was named as former firefighter Maxwell Simoes Correia, and he is suspected of hiding the weapons used by the ex-police suspects who are on trial over the shooting, according to Dino.
In March 2019, two former police officers, Ronnie Lessa and Elcio de Queiroz, were indicted on charges of shooting Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes. They remain in federal prison custody.
The minister said that Queiroz, who is accused of driving the car used in the crime, made a plea bargain with police and prosecutors and said he was an accessory to the crime and confirmed that Lessa was involved in the murder.
More:
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazilian-police-arrest-new-suspect-2018-murder-rio-councilwoman-2023-07-24/
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Brazilians Protest Assassination of Marielle Franco
Photo Credit: Midia Ninja
Thousands of Brazilians took to the streets last week throughout the country to express their grief and protest the murder of militant and councilwoman Marielle Franco (of the Socialism and Freedom Party, PSOL) and her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes.
Throughout the day in the World Social Forum -WSF-, which took place last week in Salvador, Bahia, people paid homage to Franco. Activities were interrupted in several occasions to speak against the murders of Marielle and Anderson, who were executed in a drive-by shooting on Wednesday 14 in Rio de Janeiro. Afterwards, protesters marched on the streets of the Bahian capital.
At the WSF, former President Dilma Rousseff, linked the murder to the soft coup by which current President Michel Temer arrived into power: “there is no coup without violence and barbarism”, she said. “What happened to Marielle Franco was a murder, an execution” and “must fill us with the most profound indignation”.
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“Marielle was murdered by the State and by the elite class, who couldn’t stand to see a black woman from the favelas taking the lead. They did this to try to silence the voice of women, but listen to this, look at this crowd, look at the world: they will have to silence millions of people!,” she said.
More:
https://change-links.org/brazilians-protest-assassination-of-marielle-franco/
Anderson Gomez, driving the car for Marielle Franco, was shot three times in the back, also. He and his wife, Agatha, were new parents.
