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https://theintercept.com/2019/03/18/jair-bolsonaro-family-militias-gangs-brazil/

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BRAZIL’S PRESIDENT JAIR BOLSONARO is in Washington to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday. While the trip officially is focused on the joint efforts of the U.S. and Brazil to change the government of Venezuela, it is being billed by the Bolsonaro government as a “restart” of his presidency and image after multiple, serious scandals crippled the first three months of his presidency.

But when it comes to recreating his image, the timing of this trip could hardly be worse. Key news events of the last several weeks — including the arrests of two former Rio de Janeiro police officers for the March 2018 assassination of Rio City Council Councilor Marielle Franco — have highlighted the most damaging and, to many, most terrifying revelations about Bolsonaro and his three politician sons: their extensive, direct, multilayered, and deeply personal ties to the paramilitary gangs and militias responsible for Brazil’s most horrific violence.

Watch our video report on the growing, multilevel, personal, and highly disturbing links between Bolsonaro and his family on the one hand, and the country’s most violent, lawless, and murderous paramilitary gangs on the other:

Just consider how, even before the arrests of Franco’s killers last week, so many deep ties had already emerged between Bolsonaro and his sons, who won office principally on an anti-crime and anti-corruption platform, and the paramilitary gangs composed of current and former military police officers and military members. Bolsonaro himself is a former army captain who served during Brazil’s military dictatorship and left in the 1980s amid allegations of misconduct; yet, even now as the president, he still has his friends and aides address him as “Captain.”

In January, the Rio de Janeiro police executed a full-scale raid against the city’s most dangerous militia, the one that houses within it the terrifying murder-for-hire team known as “the Crime Office.” That assassin team is composed of highly trained police officers who use their specialized knowledge of investigations and assassin skills to carry out murders with very little possibility of detection, and they have long been the leading suspects in Franco’s assassination, given how professional and frighteningly efficient that murder was carried out.

The January raid resulted in the arrest of five of the top six commanders of the militia. The only one who escaped, and is still a fugitive, was the chief of that militia: ex-police captain Adriano Magalhães da Nóbrega (pictured right, from a prior arrest). Wanted for other murders, and subject to an Interpol arrest warrant, he has presided as the leader of Rio’s most terrifying militia, the one that police concluded carried out Franco’s assassination with such chilling precision.

That raid led to a shocking revelation: Unbeknownst to the public, the mother and wife of Nóbrega — one of Brazil’s most notorious gangsters — were both receiving salaries from the state. That’s because both of them were formally employed by Flávio Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s oldest son, for the entire last decade as he served as a state representative in the Rio de Janeiro state legislature. When Jair Bolsonaro was elected president last November, Flávio moved up to the Federal Senate as a result of winning his election in Rio with a massive vote total.

Shortly after this highly incriminating connection was revealed, a dam collapsed in the interior of Brazil and tragically killed more than 200 people, understandably replacing news coverage of virtually all other events. That resulted in far less attention being paid to Flávio’s close connections to Nóbrega’s family than was deserved. So just reflect on that: Jair Bolsonaro’s son had on his official government payroll the mother and wife of one of the country’s most notorious and psychopathic paramilitary leaders, the fugitive chief of the militia responsible for the assassination of Marielle Franco, among countless other murders.

In February, Flávio’s direct and intimate ties to militias became even more glaring. Checks were found issued in the name of his campaign account signed by the sister of two twin-brother militia members, Alan and Alex Rodrigues de Oliveira, arrested in a large-scale police raid last August. Just months prior to the arrest of these two militia brothers, Flávio posted to his Instagram a photo of himself and his father, then a presidential candidate, at a birthday party for the two militia twins, congratulating them and heaping praise on the family.

IN RETROSPECT, that Flávio had such close personal connections to Rio’s militias that he put the mother and wife of its most notorious chief on his payroll should not have been surprising. As a state legislator, he twice bestowed on the top militia leaders, then police officers, formal awards and honors, praising them for their civil service to their communities.

Far worse, in 2011, Brazilian Judge Patricia Acioli, who, along with Brazil’s left-wing PSOL party, was overseeing a sweeping criminal investigation into militias and heroically sent numerous high-ranking police officers to prison, was brutally murdered outside her home, horrifying not just Brazil but the world. While all Brazilian politicians expressed horror and disgust at this brazen attack on the rule of law — showing that militias could just murder whoever they wanted, even judges sending their leaders to prison — Flávio posted a tweet that basically blamed her for her own murder, criticizing her for provoking the militias:

Jair Bolsonaro himself has a history of multiple ties to Brazil’s militias and several of its key leaders. He has twice, on the floor of the Congress, explicitly praised their death squads as good for the country’s security and crime problems. On one occasion, after various members of Congress from the northern region of Brazil warned of the growth of death squads and extrajudicial murders carried out by growing police-composed militias, Bolsonaro stood to explicitly praise them as crime-fighting patriots and declared them “welcome” in Rio de Janeiro.

Since then, those militias have taken over huge swaths of Brazil’s most critical cities, including Rio. A January investigation from The Intercept Brasil found that militias have virtually taken over the entire city.

In sum, the Bolsonaro movement has been fixated on Brazil’s crime epidemic, and anger over growing violence was arguably one of the two main factors in the rise of that movement (the other being anger over systemic political corruption). But when Bolsonaro and his family speak of crime, they almost always try to focus attention on the primarily black drug traffickers who live in the city’s poor favelas, and virtually never speak of the far more menacing, serious, and terrifying source of criminality carried out by the Bolsonaros’ ideological companions and heroes of the country’s sophisticated and skilled militias:

That Bolsonaro — despite how central his anti-crime posture is to his political popularity — is eager to praise, rather than condemn and combat, militias is not hard to understand. Those militias are ruled by his friends, neighbors, comrades, and closest associates.

The militia member who worked as Flávio’s driver for the last decade and whose large money movements — including one into the account of Jair Bolsonaro’s wife — triggered the first scandal of his presidency, ex-police Officer Fabrício Queiroz, is one of Bolsonaro’s oldest and closest friends. When police sought to question him about those money movements to the Bolsonaro family, he unsurprisingly went into hiding in the precise neighborhood, Rio das Pedras, most notorious for being commanded most thoroughly by Rio’s most violent militia.

WHEN TWO OF FRANCO’S KILLERS were finally apprehended last week, just two days shy of the one-year anniversary of her assassination, nobody was surprised that they had both been members of Brazil’s military police. The extreme professionalism with which that murder was carried out, including the still-unexplained coincidence that numerous public security cameras on the path they chose to pursue her had been turned off in the days before the assassination, left no doubt that militias were responsible.

But almost immediately after the police announced the identity of the two assassins they arrested, ties to Bolsonaro emerged. The shooter himself, police Sgt. Ronnie Lessa, lives on the same street as Bolsonaro’s Rio house, in an exclusive gated community: an extreme coincidence given how massive and sprawling of a city Rio de Janeiro is. In other words, one of Franco’s assassins — the man who pumped four bullets into her head — turned out to be Bolsonaro’s neighbor, both of whom lived in close proximity in a very rich neighborhood despite working their entire adult lives on the public payroll.

Shortly thereafter, a photo emerged of Lessa and Bolsonaro together, posted to Lessa’s social media account. Police then confirmed that Bolsonaro’s 20-year-old son and Lessa’s daughter had been dating. While none of those facts are close to dispositive in terms of linking Bolsonaro to Franco’s murder, those are a lot of coincidental connections to have between a three-decade member of Congress and the current president of the Republic, on the one hand, and the murderers who pumped four bullets into the skull of one of Rio de Janeiro’s most prominent and inspiring left-wing politicians on the other.

As part of the police search of the assassins’ properties, the police apprehended the single largest collection of armaments in the history of Brazil’s democracy: 117 M-16 automatic rifles. Notably, they were apprehended not in the favelas on which the Bolsonaros obsessively fixate when talking about crime, but in a luxury condominium owned by a former police officer who is part of the militia that assassinated Franco and which has multiple ties to the Bolsonaro family:

m16-1552922172Armaments seized from the house of one of the accused assassins of Marielle Franco, including 117 M-16 automatic rifles, from Rio de Janeiro. Photo: Rio Civil Police]

Days later, the police — despite still not having apprehended the people who ordered and paid for Franco’s assassination — insinuated a political motive to her killers. Consistent with Bolsonaro’s denunciation of the sweeping investigation of militias led by Franco’s political mentor, Marcelo Freixo of the left-wing PSOL party (the same party of Jean Wyllys, the gay congressperson who last month fled Brazil and gave up his congressional term under highly specific death threats), reports emerged that Franco’s assassins were overt Bolsonaro supporters.

The police also indicated that they had seized the computers and other electronic devices of the two killers, and discovered that, subsequent to Franco’s assassination, the murderous militia pair had searched and monitored the movements of numerous human rights activists, left-wing journalists, and politicians (one of those specified by the police was my husband, David Miranda, now a congressperson from the same left-wing party as Freixo, Franco, and Wyllys).

All of this mounting evidence — most of which has been unearthed just in the 10 weeks since Bolsonaro’s January 1 inauguration — paints a deeply disturbing and dangerous picture. Brazil — the world’s fifth-largest country, with massive oil reserves and the world’s most critical environmental region in the Amazon that the current government wants to sell off to the highest industrial bidders — is in the hands of a family with multiple, close, and growing connections to the country’s most murderous, criminal, and sociopathic death squads and paramilitary forces.

As Bolsonaro meets Trump at the White House tomorrow, that meeting should be understood first and foremost within this context. Bolsonaro has quickly elevated himself to the top echelon of the world’s most thuggish, violent, and dangerous leaders. And given the stakes raised by Brazil — geopolitically, culturally, economically, environmentally, and militarily — this is clearly one of the most profoundly disturbing developments of the last year. Whatever else is true, the media focus on Bolsonaro’s presence in the White House should feature these facts prominently and centrally if the reporting is to accurately reflect who he is and what he represents.

A makeshift memorial is pictured during a protest of Brazilian expats against the killing of Rio de Janeiro's left councilwoman and activist Marielle Franco in Berlin, Germany on March 18, 2018. Marielle Franco, who criticised openly racism and police brutality, was shot with his driver Anderson Pedro Gomes in the city center of Rio de Janeiro in the evening of March 14, 2018. (Photo by Emmanuele Contini/NurPhoto via Getty Images)Who Killed Marielle Franco? An Ex-Rio de Janeiro Cop With Ties to Organized Crime, Say Six Witnesses in Police ReportTOPSHOT - Brazil's newly sworn-in President Jair Bolsonaro is pictured during his inauguration ceremony, at the Congress in Brasilia on January 1, 2019. - Bolsonaro takes office with promises to radically change the path taken by Latin America's biggest country by trashing decades of centre-left policies. (Photo by NELSON ALMEIDA / AFP) (Photo credit should read NELSON ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images)Jair Bolsonaro’s First 53 Days as President of Brazil Have Been a Resounding, Scandalous FailureThe president-elect of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro (C), arrives for a press conference on the appointment of the ministers of Citizenship, Tourism and Regional Development at the headquarters of the transitional government in Brasilia on November 28, 2018. (Photo by Sergio LIMA / AFP) (Photo credit should read SERGIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images)Jair Bolsonaro Promised to End Corruption in Brazil — Then He Appointed an Extremely Corrupt CabinetJair Bolsonaro, far-right lawmaker and presidential candidate for the Social Liberal Party (PSL), gives thumbs up to supporters, during the second round of the presidential elections, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on October 28, 2018. - Brazilians will choose their president today during the second round of the national elections between the far-right firebrand Jair Bolsonaro and leftist Fernando Haddad (Photo by MAURO PIMENTEL / AFP) (Photo credit should read MAURO PIMENTEL/AFP/Getty Images)Jair Bolsonaro Is Elected President of Brazil. Read His Extremist, Far-Right Positions in His Own Words.

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https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/marielle-franco-assassination-conspiracy-bolsonaro

Just two days before the March 14 one-year anniversary of Marielle Franco’s assassination, civil police arrested two men alleged to be directly involved in the murder of the black, favela-born, bisexual city councilor for the Radical Left Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL) and her driver Anderson Gomes. Marcelo Freixo, Franco’s fellow PSOL member, political mentor, and friend, called the one-year wait for arrests “unacceptable.”

The arrests seemed almost deliberately timed to coincide with mass mobilizations in Rio and across Brazil demanding an answer to the questions: Who killed Marielle and Anderson — and more importantly, who ordered them killed? It’s one more coincidence in a case in which everything reeks of coincidence and conspiracy.

Ronnie Lessa, the man suspected of firing into the car carrying Franco, Gomes, and Fernanda Chaves — Franco’s aide who survived the attack and just recently returned from hiding in Europe — happens to live in the same gated community in Rio’s Barra de Tijuca neighborhood (Rio’s glitzy, fake version of Miami) as Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. This, despite a meager pension of 8,000 reais (slightly over $2,000 USD). The District Attorney also confirmed that Bolsonaro’s youngest son, twenty-one-year-old Renan, dated Lessa’s daughter. But, the office emphasized, those are just coincidences.

And Élcio Vieira de Queiroz, suspected of driving the car from which Lessa fired the thirteen rounds from a submachine gun rarely found outside police departments in Brazil, has at least two pictures with then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro.

Lessa, according to District Attorney for Rio State Letícia Emile Petriz, has not been proven to be connected to any paramilitary criminal organization. He’s said to have acted out of “repulsion for [Franco’s] political activity” in defense of “causes related to minorities.”

This account helps those in power sidestep the key question: who ordered Franco’s assassination? With Lessa acting nearly alone, with just Queiroz behind the wheel, we can depoliticize a political assassination.

Police carried out thirty-four other raids and arrests related to the case, one of which led to the seizure of 117 M16 assault rifles in what police say is the largest stock of guns ever apprehended in Rio. The guns were found in the home of one of Lessa’s childhood friends. The homeowner claims he was just doing a favor for his buddy.

As Marxist theorist and Situationist Guy Debord warned about the relationship between the state and organized crime in this stage of late capitalism: “There are ever more people trained to act in secret; prepared and practiced for that alone.”

In Rio, there is a name for these people: The Office of Crime, a hit squad comprised of elite police officers (like BOPE, a unit similar to SWAT).

Coincidentally, when he was a congressman for Rio State, now-senator Flavio Bolsonaro used to employ the mother and daughter of Adriano Magalhães da Nóbrega, the fugitive ex-BOPE officer suspected of heading the band of hired assassins.

At this point it would be a conspiracy theory to suggest that the Bolsonaro clan, or someone very close to it, called for the assassination of Marielle Franco. Coincidences are the bread and chem trails of conspiracy theories. However, between coincidence and full-blown conspiracy lies the act of conspiring. The assassination has shed light on the open secret that Rio’s political class, including the Bolsonaro clan, does conspire with deadly militias. This conspiracy with militias secures votes through intimidation, illegal campaign funds, and the deaths of political rivals.

Given the recent threats against Marcelo Freixo and fellow PSOL congressman Jean Wyllys — leading Wyllys to go into exile abroad — another open secret is that these acts of violent conspiracy are increasingly targeting socialist politicians.

Militias in Plain Sight

For those familiar with Rio, there never seemed to be any question that Franco’s assassination was carried out by one of Rio’s infamous militias. These bands of active and former police officers, military personnel, and firefighters purport to combat drug trafficking gangs but largely operate as extortionary mafias who also dabble in arms and drug trafficking. They control large swaths of Rio’s territory inhabited by the predominantly black and brown working class. They are particularly active in Rio’s still chaotically urbanizing West Zone, of which Bolsonaro’s Barra neighborhood is a nouveau riche, shopping mall-riddled enclave.

Indeed, the evidence of militia involvement has long been apparent in the public security knowledge present in the plot itself. The thirteen bullets fired at the car came from an allotment stolen from the federal police in 2009 and associated with the 2015 massacre of seventeen people in São Paulo. The two Cobalt model cars used in the drive-by shooting bore cloned licensed plates. Security cameras near the scene of the assassination had been turned off, though cameras did record one of the cars outside of the “Black Women Changing Power Structures” event that Franco attended prior to her death. Reports indicate that Lessa had Google-searched places that Franco frequented prior to the assassination. Everything indicates that this was the work of professional hitmen with political connections and that Queiroz and Lessa, who was shot by a masked man on a motorcycle while at a beach near his home just one month after the Franco assassination, are co-conspirators.

Incidentally, the idea that Lessa and Queiroz acted alone goes against much of the earlier official announcements related to the case. In late November, the federal Minister of Public Security Raul Jungmann, who oversaw the military intervention of Rio that Franco herself denounced and that failed to prevent her assassination, stated that based on testimonies “it is clear that a powerful scheme involving public agents, milicianos, and politicians does not want the case to be solved.” In other words, the assassination and the cover up were, and continue to be, a political conspiracy.

At Tuesday’s press conference, PSOL called for a national parliamentary inquiry into militias. Such an inquiry would mirror Freixo’s 2008 state-level investigation — which Franco worked on as his then-aide. The report implicated over two hundred Rio state politicians, police officers, and other public officials, though resulted in fewer arrests.

Militia activity has actually expanded since the 2008 inquiry. For his part, Freixo has received death threats ever since its publication, most recently in December of last year. Those threats, in fact, came on nearly the same day civil police raided the addresses associated with several militia members with sensationalist paper Veja even running a headline declaring: “Police arrest first suspects in Marielle’s Case.”

The Bolsonaro Clan and the Office of Crime

During Bolsonaro’s campaign, and preceding political life, the connections between his family and militias seemed mostly rhetorical. Jair Bolsonaro had adopted his “a good thug is a dead thug” campaign slogan from a former Rio miliciano and politician. He even openly praised death squads in Bahia on the floors of Congress, stating that “as long as the state does not have the courage to adopt the death penalty, these extermination groups, in my understanding, are welcome.”

Yet suspected direct links have recently emerged due to an investigation into irregular deposits involving his son, Flavio Bolsonaro, former congressman for Rio State and recently elected federal senator.

At the center of the ongoing investigation is Fabricio Queiroz (not to be confused with the Élcio Vieira de Queiroz suspected of driving Lessa in the hit against Franco). Fabricio Queiroz is a longtime friend of Jair Bolsonaro’s and served as an aide and driver to Flavio when he was a state congressman. In December, the Financial Activities Control Council (COAF) released a report documenting how Queiroz moved over 1 million reais in and out of his bank account between January 2016 and January 2017. He even cut a check to Jair Bolsonaro’s wife Michelle for 24,000 reais, though the family has brushed it off as a repayment for a personal loan. Queiroz has since confessed to using the funds to hire even more staffers for Flavio ahead of his senate campaign — supposedly without his boss’s knowledge. Additionally, as a congressman, Jair Bolsonaro employed Queiroz’s daughter Nathalia as a staffer, though she was rarely if ever in his Brasilia office.

.Isn’t it ironic, or at least an interesting coincidence, for a family that propelled itself to political power vowing to combat corruption?

But that’s not the end of it. The investigation into Queiroz’s transactions revealed Flavio Bolsonaro’s connections to Nóbrega, who the reader will recall is suspected of heading the “Office of Crime” militia hit squad. This militia allegedly operates out of the West Zone favela of Rio das Pedras, where Queiroz allegedly hid out to avoid questioning about his irregular bank activity.. The Bolsonaros insist that Queiroz bears sole responsibility for contracting Nóbrega’s wife and mother to Flavio’s congressional staff. Yet Flavio used his position as a state legislator to award honors to Nóbrega for his police activity — not once, but twice. Nóbrega is currently at large.

The investigation into Franco’s assassination revealed the existence of “the Office of Crime,” and even with the apprehension of Lessa and Elcio de Queiroz, it remains one of the principle lines of investigation into the case. On August 19, O Globo first reported the existence of the hit squad — led by current and former elite police officers — via the testimony of one of its members.

The assassins for hire operate throughout Brazil for prices ranging from 200,000 to 1 million Brazilian reals depending on the target. The Globo report goes so far as to say police have unconfirmed information that the Office of Crime charged 200,000 reals for Franco’s murder, but sought more after the overwhelming public repudiation of the crime both locally and internationally.

Governance by Conspiracy Theories

The Bolsonaro family has proffered their own conspiracy theories. Throughout the investigation and even following Tuesday’s arrests, the Bolsonaro family has appropriated the rallying crying for justice for the deaths of Franco and Gomes, asking, “who ordered the death of Jair Bolsonaro,” in reference to the September 6 stabbing of the then-candidate at a campaign rally in Minas Gerais. However, Bolsonaro’s alleged attempted murderer, Adélio Bispo da Oliveira, was apprehended shortly after the incident and has since been cooperating with the investigation.

In his most bizarre retaliatory conspiracy theory, President Bolsonaro took to his Twitter account to claim that “decades of governments with a socialist bent” had turned Brazil’s iconic carnival into a scene of depravity. Incidentally, this year’s celebrations largely mocked him and paid homage to Franco. His proof — tweeted out to the world — was a video of a Carnival revelers partaking in a (consensual) golden shower. He followed this up with the now immortal tweet, “O que é golden shower?” (“What is a golden shower?”).

Bolsonaro’s presidency by pornography came amidst Fabricio Queiroz’s confession of siphoning cash to irregular staffers for Flavio, and a corruption scandal within Boslonaro’s party in which “shell” female candidates were run in order to secure public campaign money and meet federal gender quotas for parties.

To ensure that conspiracy theories overshadow Bolsonaro’s own acts of conspiring, the Sunday before the arrests, the president again took to Twitter to attack Estadão de São Paulo journalist Constança Rezende, who has reported on the links between Queiroz and Flavio. Rezende happens to be the daughter of Chico Otávio, the O Globo journalist who broke the story of Ronnie Lessa’s arrest.

A Murder on the West Zone Express

However, before the Lessa connection, the police had been pursuing other lines of investigation that converge in Rio’s West Zone and coincide with the open secret of militias.

The early stages of the investigation maintained Franco’s fellow city council member Marcello Siciliano as a person of interest in the case. As early as May, testimonies tied Siciliano and former military police officer Orlando Oliveira de Araújo, known as Orlando de Curicica, to the assassination. Oliveira has been in prison awaiting conviction since 2017 for murder and heading a militia in the West Zone neighborhood that gave him his nickname. Testimony claims that Siciliano finances the militia that de Araújo heads, and that both men called for Franco’s execution because of her political activity in the West Zone. One of Siciliano’s assistants was murdered shortly after Siciliano’s own police interrogation, raising concerns that he was attempting to cover up his role in the assassination.

Siciliano has repeatedly denied any involvement and after police searched his home and office during the December raids, he called for the Federal Police to take over the investigation. Globo then reported that money laundering and land fraud could be possible motivations for the crime, as Franco’s staff were carrying out an investigation into irregular land titling in a West Zone neighborhood dominated by militias and from which Siciliano received much of his electoral support. He and Franco both started their first city council terms in 2016, and Siciliano contends that their tenure together was too short to lead to such violent animosity. Even Freixo, at a December 14 press conference, questioned whether Franco’s land fraud investigation, which never reached parliamentary inquiry status and had not been completed prior to her death, would be sufficient motivation for her assassination. He also emphasized her minimal role in the 2008 parliamentary inquiry.

For his part, Orlando Oliveira de Araújo has also denied any involvement, and as early as May maintained in a letter that the testimony against him is an act of revenge by another military police officer-turned-militia member. In the letter, which was partially published by both Globo and O Dia newspapers, de Araújo names the officer despite not being privy to any information involving the case. In August, de Araújo then claimed to the Federal Prosecutor General that he was coerced into confessing to the murders by Giniton Lages, head of the Civil Police Homicide Division overseeing the case. According to de Araújo, Lages pressured him while he was still in state prison in Rio, threatening to send him to federal prison if he did not confess to his and Siciliano’s involvement. De Araújo was relocated to federal prison in June.

De Araújo’s testimony provided much of the substantiation for the existence of the Office of Crime, though he long asserted that the police actively refused to investigate it due to the regular payments they received from the organization.

Jungmann’s November claim that powerful actors within Rio’s security forces have been stalling the investigation stem from de Araújo’s testimony to the Prosecutor General and led to a Federal Police investigation into tampering with the investigation. A report on that investigation, also released on Tuesday to little media coverage, substantiates many of de Araújo’s claims and the unnamed, vengeful officer has admitted to the lie.

Meanwhile, Rio Governor Witzel, who infamously commemorated the destruction of a memorial street sign dedicated to Marielle Franco at a campaign rally in the city of Petropolis, has just announced that Lages will no longer head the investigation into the murder, and instead participate in a police exchange in Italy.

Those who conspire seem to know when other conspiracies have turned against them.

One additional line of inquiry has received far less media attention. In August, reports emerged that three state congressmen from the Brazilian Democratic Movement party (MBD), Edson Albertassi, Paulo Melo, and Jorge Picciani, were also being investigated. MBD dominated Rio politics for the last decade, holding the governorship from 2007–2018 and the mayor’s office from 2009–2016, before recent corruption revelations led it to suffer electoral defeats. All three legislators have been arrested in connection to the anti-corruption probe Operation Car Wash, as have former MBD governors Sergio Cabral and Luiz Pezão. Picciani served as the state assembly president five times since his first legislative term in 1990 and was presiding over his sixth when he was arrested. Investigators posit that Franco’s death may have been retaliation against PSOL for preventing Albertassi from assuming a position within the state’s Court of Auditors, which would have maintained his political immunity and thus prevented his arrest.

Militias proliferated under the tenure of multiple MDB governors and mayors, who oversaw much of the expansion into the West Zone through mega-event projects for the World Cup and Olympic Games. Militias aren’t around by accident; they are the foot soldiers of a criminal political conspiracy to control land and votes.

In an interview on Globo’s Fantastico program this Sunday, Franco’s aide Fernanda Chaves, recently returned from hiding in Europe, asserted that Franco “did not have militias as a target [of her political projects]” and was much more committed to “questions of gender and violence against women.” No specific project or problem, according to Chaves, would have “set in motion a situation that would culminate in her assassination.”

But Franco did “make other people uncomfortable.” A definitive answer to who ordered the killing would only increase that discomfort. Her presence challenged the racism and sexism of institutions like the city council where fellow lawmakers refused to take the elevator with her. Her policies, mostly geared towards combating violence against women and increasing access to nighttime day-care, centered working people rather than the monied, connected class. And her political activism in favelas and peripheries constantly shed light on the open secret of state-sanctioned police violence.

Rio’s Militia Politics at Home in the Presidential Palace

Historian and essayist Perry Anderson notes that Bolsonaro’s presidency represents a “signal shift.” This shift is not simply an ideological one from the decade of social-democratic governance under the Workers Party (PT) administrations of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. It is also geographic.

As Anderson points out, a quarter of Bolsonaro’s ministers are from Rio, and Bolsonaro himself is the first president to constitute his political base in Rio since the capital moved to Brasilia in 1960. Bolsonaro himself was born in São Paulo State and is thus not carioca — a person from Rio city proper. However, he embraces a carioca-way of doing politics — a politics of conspiring and conspiracy.

Rio’s return to political prominence began under Eduardo Cunha, the Machiavellian former MDB president of the House of Deputies and prime candidate for the title of Brazil’s most powerful gangster. Cunha stayed out of jail just long enough to oversee Rousseff’s controversial, and conspiracy-theory driven, impeachment. Cunha himself has his own murky history of connections with Rio’s militias in the Baixada Fluminense. The chickens, and the militias, are coming home to roost.

For Bolsonaro’s die-hard supporters, this is all, of course, fake news, a conspiracy theory forged at the communist São Paulo Forum to take down the man who will Make Brazil Great Again (Bolsonaro visited Trump this week). For them, Franco is not an embodiment of the meritocracy they claim to hold so dear — despite the fact that she attended a prestigious private university, obtained her Master’s, and earned her votes rather than hanging onto the coattails of her father. Instead, they see her as a nuisance at best, and a closet gang member at worst. The surge in leftist black and LGBT candidates who ran for state and federal congress as “the seeds” of Franco’s legacy, simply need to be “cleansed” or “exiled,” according to Bolsonaro’s supporters, as evident in their elation at Jean Wyllys’s decision to leave Brazil.

Bolsonaro’s inability to govern is attributed not to his sheer mediocrity or the lunacy of his cabinet. Supporters instead claim that if everyone, including members of his own party, just shut up and let The Myth reign, things would turn around. (The raining twitterstorm of golden showers was weird, they admit.)

The unfortunate truth is that governance by Twitter conspiracy theory will be tolerated by many of his diehard supporters so long as gun ownership is liberated, no matter if that leads to school shootings, and letting police — so what if they are also milicianos — kill the black and brown poor, at will. All the better if they are leftists.

Rio’s Mangueira samba school won this year’s competition with a parade showcasing the untold story of Brazil’s indigenous, black, and poor populations, culminating in a cathartic tribute to Marielle Franco.

Rio city councilman Carlos Bolsonaro then took to Twitter to remind his followers that “they say” the school’s president, Chiquinho da Mangueira, “is arrested, [for] involvement with trafficking, illegal bookies and militias.” This was a sign that “the country is truly upside down.”

He failed to mention what “they say” about his father or brother’s involvement, or that he and Chiquinho are members of the same political party.

When it comes to the politics of conspiring that defines Rio, Debord again offered prescient insights: “It is always a mistake to try to explain something by opposing Mafia and state: they are never rivals. Theory easily verifies what all the rumors in practical life have all too easily shown. The Mafia is not an outsider in this world; it is perfectly at home.” It’s the hit squad next door, with no rivals in the presidential palace.

Fortunately, Franco’s seeds grow elsewhere.

Stephanie Reist is a freelance writer and researcher based in Rio de Janeiro. She received her PhD in Latin American cultural studies from Duke University and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in education policy at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Multidisciplinary Institute. Her research focuses on race and public policy in urban peripheries.

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wapo

‘This will not stick’: Brazilian president lashes out over alleged links to left-wing politician’s killing

Terrence McCoy,

Marina Lopes and

Teo Armus

Oct. 30, 2019 at 3:43 p.m. PDT

RIO DE JANEIRO — He shouted. He swore. He pointed a finger at the camera. His voice wavered and cracked. This was Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro indignant, airing grievances, vowing retribution.

“Why do they want to destroy me?” he asked during the live stream at 4 a.m. Wednesday from Saudi Arabia. “I shouldn’t lose it,” he said at another point, a tear glistening on his cheek. “I’m the president of the republic.”...

no lnx

Opinion

The Rise of the Milícia State

Just how deep do the connections between Brazil’s paramilitary “death squads” and the government run?

Vanessa Barbara

By Vanessa Barbara

Ms. Barbara is an author and a contributing opinion writer.

April 10, 2019

"Who commissioned the murder of Marielle?" asked a banner last month, one year after the murder of the city councilwoman and human rights activist Marielle Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes.

"Who commissioned the murder of Marielle?" asked a banner last month, one year after the murder of the city councilwoman and human rights activist Marielle Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes.Credit...Ian Cheibub/picture alliance, via Getty Images]

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A little more than a year ago, a member of Rio de Janeiro’s City Council was murdered with four shots to the head and neck. The councilwoman, Marielle Franco, was headed home from an event when a car pulled up and someone opened fire, killing her and her driver. It was obvious from the beginning that this was a premeditated, professional assassination. Ms. Franco was a black, feminist L.G.B.T. activist, a fierce human-rights defender who wasn’t afraid to take on sensitive issues: the use of state violence in favelas, for instance, or the involvement of police and politicians in Rio’s paramilitary groups.

There was finally a breakthrough in the case last month, when the state police arrested two suspects. Unsurprisingly enough, they were former military police officers. The alleged shooter, Ronnie Lessa, had retired from the force after being injured in a car-bomb attack; according to investigators, he then took a job as a contract killer and gun runner for one of the most powerful militias in Rio de Janeiro, called the Escritório do Crime, or Crime Bureau. The other suspect, Élcio Vieira de Queiroz, who might have acted as a getaway driver, had been expelled from the police force under suspicion of providing security for an illegal gambling house. (Both men deny involvement in the murders.)

But who ordered the assassination? That’s where things get messy. So messy that last year, the federal police began an inquiry into the local murder investigation, after allegations that it had been systematically obstructed by militia members, public officials and politicians. Last November, Brazil’s public security minister at the time said that it’s “more than a certainty” that powerful people are involved in the murder. Some say, half-jokingly, that it might be easier to pinpoint who is not involved.

By now the federal task force has searched the residences of a former state representative, a former civil policeman, a former federal agent and an active-duty federal police official. Even the current president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has come under public scrutiny for his ties to both of the suspects in the killing. He and Mr. Lessa were neighbors in a luxury seaside condominium in Rio de Janeiro, and his youngest son once dated Mr. Lessa’s daughter. There is also a picture of Mr. Bolsonaro posing alongside Mr. Queiroz. (The president has denied knowing the men.)

But these could be just coincidences. More troubling is the outspoken sympathy of the president and his family for the paramilitaries.

The infamous “milícias,” in their current form, were established in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas in the late 1990s and early 2000s, under the pretext of protecting residents from drug traffickers. They are mainly formed of active-duty and retired police officers who assume control of the communities and extort money from ordinary citizens and shopkeepers. A 2013 academic report concluded that of the roughly 1,000 favelas in the city, 45 percent are controlled by militia organizations and 37 percent by drug gangs.

During his 27 years as a congressman, Jair Bolsonaro repeatedly supported death squads and militias. In 2003, he said, “As long as the state does not have the courage to adopt the death penalty, those death squads, in my opinion, are very welcome.” In a 2008 interview, the future president of Brazil declared that the government should support militias and potentially legalize them, since they “offer security and in this way they can maintain order and discipline in their communities.”

It runs in the family, apparently. Mr. Bolsonaro’s eldest son, the senator Flávio Bolsonaro, was recently revealed to have connections to a former military police captain, Adriano Magalhães da Nóbrega, the purported head of the Crime Bureau. (The ex-police officer is now a fugitive from justice.) Both Mr. Nóbrega’s mother and wife were employed for years in Flávio Bolsonaro’s office when he was a Rio de Janeiro State lawmaker. In a news release, Senator Bolsonaro claimed that the women were hired by someone else and that he was the victim of a smear campaign. But he also praised Mr. Nóbrega twice in Rio’s Legislative Assembly for his work as a police officer, awarding him the highest honor granted by the assembly — the Tiradentes Medal — while he was still in jail on a homicide conviction. (The murder victim was a favela resident who had just denounced crimes of torture and extortion allegedly committed by his police squad.) Incidentally, when Mr. Nóbrega was found guilty and sentenced to 19 years in prison, Jair Bolsonaro, too, came to his defense in the Congress, saying he was a “brilliant officer” and demanding a review of the conviction. (Mr. Nóbrega was eventually acquitted on appeal.)

In 2015, Flávio Bolsonaro was the only legislator to vote against the establishment of a parliamentary commission to investigate frauds in “autos de resistência” — killings on the part of the police that are reported as having occurred in self-defense. He argued that the investigation would put a “knife in the throat” of police officers, who already do not have legal security to carry out their work. In 2008, he spoke of the “happiness” of the people “residing in these communities, supposedly dominated by militiamen.” Finally, last year, he was the only legislator to vote against awarding the Tiradentes Medal — that same honor he once gave to a purported militia leader — to Marielle Franco.

Which brings us back to her assassination. Bank records have showed a cash deposit of 100,000 reais (about $25,000) into the alleged shooter’s account. Who ordered the crime? And why? How widespread is the influence of paramilitary gangs in Brazil’s police force and politics?

Those questions are met with silence while the country remains one of the deadliest places for human rights defenders in the world. Many cases are never solved. Most of them seem to be quickly forgotten. The situation looks poised to get only worse, since our new president loathes the concept of human rights (in a 2016 tweet, he compared them to “manure”) and welcomes the actions of death squads (“If it were up to me, they would have all the support,” he told Congress in 2003).

It looks like there’s no need to legalize militias in Brazil, after all. Today one might have the impression that paramilitary groups are not merely acting as a parallel state — they are the state.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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Marielle Franco - Wikipedia

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www.nytimes.com › 2019/04/10 › opinion › brazil-bolsonaro-militias

Opinion | The Rise of the Milícia State - The New York Times

Apr 10, 2019 - Ms. Franco was a black, feminist L.G.B.T. activist, a fierce human-rights defender who wasn't afraid to take on sensitive issues: ... (Both men deny involvement in the murders.) ... Even the current president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has come under public scrutiny for his ties to both of the suspects in the killing.

www.hrw.org › world-report › country-chapters › brazil

Brazil - World Report 2019: Brazil | Human Rights Watch

Jair Bolsonaro, a member of Congress who has endorsed torture and other ... Violence reached a new record in Brazil, with some 64000 killings in 2017. ... and her driver, Anderson Gomes, gunned down in a professional killing in March.

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https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/marielle-franco-assassination-conspiracy-bolsonaro

In Rio, there is a name for these people: The Office of Crime, a hit squad comprised of elite police officers (like BOPE, a unit similar to SWAT).

Militias in Plain Sight

The Bolsonaro Clan and the Office of Crime

...

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wapo

‘This will not stick’: Brazilian president lashes out over alleged links to left-wing politician’s killing

Terrence McCoy,

Marina Lopes and

Teo Armus

Oct. 30, 2019 at 3:43 p.m. PDT

no lnx

Opinion

The Rise of the Milícia State

Just how deep do the connections between Brazil’s paramilitary “death squads” and the government run?

Vanessa Barbara

By Vanessa Barbara

Ms. Barbara is an author and a contributing opinion writer.

April 10, 2019

"Who commissioned the murder of Marielle?" asked a banner last month, one year after the murder of the city councilwoman and human rights activist Marielle Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes.

But these could be just coincidences. More troubling is the outspoken sympathy of the president and his family for the paramilitaries.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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Mar 22, 2019 - Monica Benicio, ex-partner of Marielle Franco, murdered on March of 2018 in Rio ... and across Brazil demanding an answer to the questions: Who killed Marielle ... With Lessa acting nearly alone, with just Queiroz behind the wheel, we can ... The assassination has shed light on the open secret that Rio's ...

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ref rww

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/world/americas/jair-bolsonaro-son-ambassador.html

no lnx

Brazil’s President May Appoint Son, Friend to the Trumps, as Ambassador to U.S.

Eduardo Bolsonaro is being considered by his father, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, as the next ambassador to the United States.

Eduardo Bolsonaro is being considered by his father, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, as the next ambassador to the United States.Credit...Joshua Roberts/Reuters

By Ernesto Londoño

July 12, 2019

RIO DE JANEIRO — President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil is weighing appointing his third son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, as ambassador to the United States, arguing that his son’s friendship with President Trump’s sons would make him an effective envoy.

But the move immediately provoked criticism because ambassadorial appointments for noncareer diplomats in Brazil are exceptionally rare. The younger Bolsonaro is a federal lawmaker.

Diplomats are selected through a highly competitive process that has made Brazil’s foreign service one of the most respected in the world.

“We’ve never had a president who named a son as ambassador,” said Maurício Santoro, an international relations professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “That is something that sets Brazil apart from other countries in Latin America.”

The president and Eduardo Bolsonaro spoke enthusiastically on Thursday about the possibility, in separate conversations with reporters, but both said it was not yet a done deal.

Their remarks appeared to be a trial balloon to test how much opposition a formal nomination would face.

Brazilian legal experts said appointing Eduardo Bolsonaro as ambassador could run afoul of nepotism rules. The appointment would require approval from the Senate.

The president said part of the appeal of the idea is the preferential access he thinks his son would get in Washington.

“Clearly, the treatment he would receive would be different from that of another ambassador,” the president said. “He’s a friend of Trump’s sons, speaks English, speaks Spanish, and has a lot of worldly experience.”

Eduardo Bolsonaro, 35, was elected last year from São Paulo, and serves in the lower House. He is the head of the foreign affairs committee there.

The son’s effusive support of the Trump administration has endeared him to the American president, who singled him out for praise when the father visited the White House in March. The younger Mr. Bolsonaro accompanied the Brazilian leader on that visit and was invited to attend an Oval Office meeting.

During a visit to Washington earlier this year, Eduardo Bolsonaro said undocumented Brazilians living in the United States are “an embarrassment.” During a visit to the White House he wore a baseball cap with the slogan Make America Great Again — Trump 2020.

In February, during a stop at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s golf club in Palm Beach, Fla., Eduardo Bolsonaro reminisced about his days working as a federal police officer along Brazil’s border with Bolivia as he hailed the White House’s bid to build a wall along the Mexican border.

“We know how the things work,” he said. “So build that wall! We Brazilians are supporting you!”

Eduardo Bolsonaro told reporters on Thursday that by nominating a son as ambassador to the United States his father would be sending a clear signal of his “strong commitment” to strengthen relations between Brazil and the United States. He added that as ambassador he would strive to rebuild Brazil’s reputation abroad and attract investment.

Unlike several countries in the region, Brazil has built a professional foreign service in which top posts are not used to reward campaign donors and political allies.

The ambassadorship in Washington is seen as the service’s premier overseas post and it has historically been held by officials with distinguished careers in diplomacy and foreign affairs.

Mr. Santoro, from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said Eduardo Bolsonaro lacked the experience for such a complex job. He also said Eduardo Bolsonaro’s effusive support for Mr. Trump would make him ineffective at dealing with Democrats in Washington, particularly if they win back the White House next year.

Under Brazil’s Constitution, ambassadors must be at least 35 years old. Eduardo Bolsonaro turned 35 this week.

Eduardo Bolsonaro and two of his brothers, Carlos, a Rio de Janeiro City Council member, and Flávio, a federal Senator, have become high-profile and at times controversial political figures since their father’s election last year.

Flávio Bolsonaro is under criminal investigation for a suspected money laundering scheme run out of his office when he was a state lawmaker in Rio de Janeiro. The scandal has marred the president’s image as a anti-corruption crusader.

Carlos Bolsonaro has been a driver of infighting and intrigue within his father’s senior team, picking public fights with the country’s vice president and other top officials.

Eduardo Bolsonaro has generated fewer headaches for the president.

Last year he sought the counsel of the former White House strategist Steve Bannon and after a meeting declared that the two “share the same worldview.”

He also has railed against leftist leaders in the region, saying they sought to impose a form of “cultural Marxism.”

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omg 1st guaido sotu and now:

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/cpac-to-feature-authoritarian-brazilian-politician-eduardo-bolsonaro/

Organizers of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference portray themselves as lovers of freedom, but among this year’s speakers will be Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of Brazil’s authoritarian President Jair Bolsonaro and the leader of a right-wing party in the Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies. In January, the Brazilian government filed criminal charges against American journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been a harsh critic of the Bolsonaro administration.

The American Conservative Union, the group that puts on CPAC, heralded the younger Bolsonaro. Tweeting last week about Eduardo Bolsonaro’s planned appearance, ACU chair Matt Schlapp wrote, “In 2019 ACU hosted several international CPAC events, one of which was #CPACbrazil, thanks to @BolsonaroSP. At #CPAC2020 he’ll share how our conservative movement inspires freedom-loving people across the globe & how the US & Brazil can work together to stop socialism.”

But Eduardo Bolsonaro seems keen to “stop socialism” with authoritarianism. Eduardo Bolsonaro, who is also the regional representative of former White House strategist Steve Bannon’s global right-wing group The Movement, warned recently that the government could resort to repression to deal with protests and leftists “via a new AI-5.” The Guardian’s Tom Phillips explained:

That was a reference to one of the most traumatic events in recent Brazilian history – December 1968’s Institutional Act Number Five (AI-5) – when Brazil’s military rulers moved to extinguish growing political unrest by indefinitely outlawing freedom of expression and assembly and closing congress.

“The AI-5 was an instrument intended to intimidate people … It allowed the dictatorship to repress all opposition and dissent,” the historians Lilia Schwarz and Heloisa M Starling wrote in their recent “biography” of Brazil.

Eduardo Bolsonaro’s comments reportedly shocked many Brazilians, but they aligned with previous statements made by his father, who also served in the legislature before being elected president in 2018 During his presidential campaign, the theme of which was “Brazil before everything, and God above all,” Jair Bolsonaro supported the torture carried out by the military dictatorship that ran the country from 1964 to 1985, and warned that under his regime, minorities would have to “bow to the majority … or disappear.”

Right Wing Watch noted last year, a week after Jair Bolsonaro’s inauguration, that he “didn’t waste much time issuing executive orders and taking other actions going after the people he had targeted in his campaign rhetoric: the LGBTQ community; indigenous people; descendants of former slaves; civil servants deemed not on board with Bolsonaro’s ideological agenda; nonprofit organizations; and the media.”

Just this week, Eduardo Bolsonaro launched a social media attack on filmmaker Petra Costa, whose documentary “The Edge of Democracy” has been nominated for an Academy Award, The Guardian reported. Eduardo Bolsonaro tweeted that Costa was a “scumbag” and a liar. He and other government officials are angry about the movie and an interview in which Costa criticized? government policies encouraging the plunder of the Amazon region, a spike in police killings, ?the administration’s anti-gay actions and increased government censorship?.

In August 2018, months before the election that made his father president, Eduardo Bolsonaro met with Bannon and announced that Bannon would be offering suggestions on online strategy and data analysis for his father’s presidential campaign. He declared that he and Bannon would “join forces” against “cultural Marxism.”

Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign was backed by U.S. religious-right leaders, including former Rep. Michele Bachmann, who met with Eduardo Bolsonaro and recorded a video message to Brazilian Christians urging them to vote “only for a candidate for the president of Brazil who will support moving the Brazilian embassy ?[in Israel] to Jerusalem.” Trump-supporting “prophet” Cindy Jacobs and her husband Mike Jacobs declared that Jair Bolsonaro is establishing God’s kingdom in Brazil—turning it from a “goat nation” into a “sheep nation.” ?(There’s a biblical passage that refers to Jesus’s second coming when all the nations will be gathered before him and he, like a shepherd, will separate the sheep from the goats.)

The Times of Israel reported that, in a visit to Israel in December, Eduardo Bolsonaro portrayed the trip as a first step toward moving Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem this year. He refused to endorse a two-state solution to peace and said he could imagine the government closing the Palestinian embassy in Brazil. While in Israel, Eduardo “reiterated his opposition to gay marriage,” saying in a television interview “that if he wedded his dog it would still not make them a family,” the Times of Israel reported.

The Bolsonaro government has been warmly embraced by the Trump administration as an ally in promoting “family values” around the world. At Jair Balsonaro’s inauguration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave the new president a hug.

Last summer Jair Bolsonaro announced plans to make Eduardo Bolsonaro the country’s ambassador to the U.S, touting Eduardo’s friendship with President Trump’s sons, but the plan was abandoned in the face of resistance to “such a blatant act of nepotism.” President Trump had supported the plan, saying, “I know his son, and that’s probably why they did it. I don’t think it’s nepotism.”

Tags: Eduardo Bolsonaro Jair Bolsonaro CPAC 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC

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