Brazilian police officers who killed councilor Marielle Franco have been sentenced to 78 and 59 years in prison

The former military police officer and hitman who killed leftist Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) councilor Marielle Franco by firing four bullets in 2018 was sentenced this Thursday to 78 years in prison. and his partner in crime, Eliseo Queiroz, another former agent expelled from the force, who was 59, driving the attacker’s car that night. Thus ended the most relevant political murder trial in Brazil in recent years. A jury of seven white men found both of them guilty of double murder – Franco and his driver, Anderson Gomes – after deliberating more than an hour in closing arguments in a two-day trial in Rio. The decision was expected. Both defendants have reached cooperation agreements to disclose the conspiracy in exchange for reduced sentences. They will only serve the sentence imposed by the judge if they fail to follow the plea agreement given.

Lesa, the shooter, has agreed to a maximum sentence of 30 years, which will keep him in prison until 2037, in exchange for denouncing those who committed and financed a political crime. The terms of Queiroz’s deal are undisclosed. Chiquinho and Domingos Brazão, two brothers, powerful and suspicious politicians well known in the underworld and in the offices of Rio de Janeiro, had been arrested a few months earlier as the intellectual authors of the crime. A police commissioner, who was assigned the task of investigating the murders, was arrested in the same operation on charges of obstructing the investigation. According to the shooter, Commissioner Rivaldo Barbosa had designed the crime in such a way that those involved would never be caught. All three are in jail awaiting trial, with no date yet.

“People have to stop normalizing the murder of a councilor or the murder of a child by a stray bullet,” said the councilor’s sister, Anielle Franco, minister of racial equality in Lula’s government. the victim’s mother, Marinette; his father, Antonio; His daughter Luyara and the minister were in the room when the judge pronounced the sentence. They all hugged each other enthusiastically. Next to them are the wives of the victims. Franco’s father told his granddaughter, “Because of your mother we have achieved this.”

In sentencing, the magistrate recognized the importance of the case and the fear that it would not be punished: “Justice is sometimes slow, blind, stupid, unfair, wrong and crooked, but it comes. “Justice is served even to those who, like the accused, believe that justice will never reach them.”

For the past six years, a double question has been echoing in Brazil, the answer to which began to be found this Thursday: who killed Marielle and why? The assassination of Franco, a novice councilor who came to politics from human rights activism, black, raised in a poor family, a single mother and married to another woman, caused a massive uproar. In a short time, the fact that justice was done in the case of Marielle and Anderson became the great flag of the left, troubled by the extreme right, which came to power in the hands of Jair Bolsonaro a few months after the crime.

The council’s press officer survived the attack with minor injuries and was the first witness in the trial this Wednesday. The day’s testimony was closed by the killer Lesha, who, after describing each stage of the criminal conspiracy with complete naturalness and coolness, apologized to the victims and those close to them. The prosecutor warned this Thursday that the gesture was “a sham.”

The now convicted were arrested on the first anniversary of the death, but for years they broke their silence only to proclaim their innocence. According to Franco’s mother, the investigation of the double murder took a new turn, thanks to the political impetus given to the investigation by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after years of false leads and little progress. For the families of the victims, the trial of the criminals is just the beginning of a fight they have waged with the support of countless social movements, so that justice is served and those responsible are punished. The next step will be for the Brazos, who were on the police radar from the beginning, to be prosecuted and sentenced.

Human Rights Watch highlighted in a note that this double punishment for a double crime “is very important to guarantee justice. It is necessary that the Public Prosecutor’s Office gather strong evidence to convict the principals also.