This article is more than 5 years old

An image of Brazil’s president with a suspect in the councillor’s death has raised questions over his family’s alleged mafia ties

Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent
Wed 13 Mar 2019 13.53 EDT



Jair Bolsonaro lived in the same beachside Rio apartment block as one of Marielle Franco’s alleged killers. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
Jair Bolsonaro
This article is more than 5 years old
Bolsonaro in spotlight after photo with Marielle Franco murder suspect surfaces
This article is more than 5 years old
An image of Brazil’s president with a suspect in the councillor’s death has raised questions over his family’s alleged mafia ties

Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent
Wed 13 Mar 2019 13.53 EDT

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, is facing growing calls to explain his family’s alleged links to the heavily armed and notoriously violent paramilitary gangs that control large swaths of Rio de Janeiro.

Questions over possible connections between the Bolsonaros and Rio’s so-called “militias” were swirling even before the former army captain took office in January – so much so that revellers at this year’s carnival penned a song satirising the president’s supposed criminal ties.

But those concerns intensified this week when a photograph emerged in which a grinning Jair Bolsonaro appears with his arm around Élcio Queiroz, one of the two men arrested on Tuesday for the 2018 assassination of the Rio councillor Marielle Franco.

. . .

Police also confirmed that one of Bolsonaro’s sons had dated the daughter of the other murder suspect, Ronnie Lessa, and that Lessa lived in the same beachside compound where Brazil’s president lived until moving to the capital following his election last year.

“These relations between paramilitaries and the president of the republic must be explained,” demanded Humberto Costa, a Worker’s party senator from north-east Brazil.


More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/13/jair-bolsonaro-paramilitaries-marielle-franco-suspects







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Bolsonaro, Militias and Marielle Franco: What We Know

By BRASILWIRE

Post date
March 14, 2019



As the net around Marielle Franco’s killers tightens, more and more evidence is pointing to an extermination group that has a relationship with the Bolsonaro family. Who ordered the killing of Marielle Franco?

Today marks the one year anniversary of the brutal assassination of socialist Rio de Janeiro City Councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes. Although Rio de Janeiro’s Civil Police organized crime unit, GAECO, is still investigating who ordered the assassination, the arrest of two suspects in the killings, both former Military Police officers, is an important step forward in unraveling the mystery. One important element of the case is the apparent involvement in the Escritorio do Crime, an organized crime militia made up of current and former Military Police officers, that engages in extortion and death squad activities while controlling 4 favelas in the Rio das Pedras region on Rio’s west side. Another important element of the case is the extremely cozy relationship that the Bolsonaro family has with the Escritorio do Crime militia. The following is a time line of facts about this relationship that have come out over the last year in the Brazilian media.

Timeline

August, 2003: Jair Bolsonaro publicly defends Militias in a speech in Congress, saying, “I just heard a Congressman criticize death squads. As long as the State does not have the courage to adopt the death penalty, the crime of extermination, in my understanding, should be very welcome…. If it depended on me they would have all of my support…”

March 2007 – As a State Congressman, Jair’s son Flavio attempts to legalize militias. “For me, human rights are not for all humans, because some people cannot be called humans. They are monsters,” he says in defense of death squad executions.

August, 2011 – After Judge Patricia Acioli is assassinated with 21 gunshots by two militia members, Flavio Bolsonaro commits character assassination against her, “May God take her but the absurd and gratuitous way that she used to humiliate police officers contributed to her having many enemies,” he said. Before her assassination, Judge Acioli had convicted 60 police officers for acting in militias and for death squad activities.

August, 2011 – After Judge Patricia Acioli is assassinated with 21 gunshots by two militia members, Flavio Bolsonaro commits character assassination against her, “May God take her but the absurd and gratuitous way that she used to humiliate police officers contributed to her having many enemies,” he said. Before her assassination, Judge Acioli had convicted 60 police officers for acting in militias and for death squad activities.

February, 2018 – During a radio interview on Joven Pan, Jair Bolsonaro, again, defends Militias. “There are people who support militias,” he says, “because it is the way that they can live without violence. In those regions where people pay militias, there is no violence.”

March, 2018 – Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes are assassinated. Jair Bolsonaro is the only presidential candidate who does not publicly condemn the killings.

More:
https://www.brasilwire.com/bolsonaro-militias-and-marielle-franco-what-we-know/