Brazilian activist and politician Marielle Franco, assassinated on March 14.

Photo: Telam.

During his government, former President Jair Bolsonaro told his diplomatic complex and Brazilian embassies in Europe to put pressure on foreign media - especially La República de Italia - for giving too much importance to the murder of socialist councilor Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro. , in March 2018, which left him under a cloak of suspicion.

The directive that the Brazilian diplomatic corps received was intended for the particular benefit of President Bolsonaro's party.

In parallel, he demanded from the foreign media -before the coverage of Franco- that they did not give due importance to the stab wound he had received during the electoral campaign, an attack that by the way is suspected of being fake: Lula da Silva himself, always cautious in his denunciations, he has expressed his reservations.

Politicians also brought complaints about Franco to the Brazilian embassies in Europe.

The Brazilian embassy in France, in particular, complained strongly about this "differential treatment" given to the two cases, trying to put Franco and Bolsonaro on the same level, as equivalent victims.

These data are part of the diplomatic cables that had been placed under a hundred-year secret by the Bolsonaro government and that were revealed by the SBT and CNN Brasil chains, which obtained them based on a judicial decision based on the law of access to public information and the authorization of the government of President Lula da Silva.

According to justice, Marielle Franco was murdered on March 14, 2018 by two former police officers from parapolice gangs, now detained, who went out to commit the murder from the same closed neighborhood of Barra de Tijuca where Bolsonaro, who was a presidential candidate, has his residence.

At the time of the murder, the security of Rio de Janeiro was in charge of General Walter Braga Netto, who was Bolsonaro's vice candidate in 2022. So far it is unknown who ordered the assassination of Marielle Franco.

The diplomatic system of the Itamaraty Palace recorded a cable from the Brazilian ambassador to France, Luis Fernando Serra, declaring "indignation" with the French political parties that came to the diplomatic headquarters to ask about the progress of Franco's cause.

The ambassador wrote at the time to the foreign ministry in Brasilia: "I emphasized in the letters (to French politicians) about my deep indignation with the disparate treatment in relation to crimes", trying to show that Bolsonaro had been as much a victim as Franco for having received a knife, or as if one thing compensated for the other.

The Brazilian embassies in Switzerland, Italy and Germany also responded to the media and political leaders about the Franco case.

The murder of the activist was one of the most important political crimes in the history of Brazil: it marked the prelude to the rise of the ultra-right to power, coinciding with the imprisonment and banning of Lula in 2018, sentenced by the then judge Sergio Moro, later minister of Bolsonaro.

CNN Brazil reported that it had access to 700 pages of telegrams since 2018, when Michel Temer governed, which indicated the negative impact of the crime of Franco and his driver, Anderson Gomes, on international public opinion and the image of Brazil.

How is the case going?

The Brazilian Minister of Justice, Flavio Dino, promised to go in depth to clarify the murder of the Brazilian activist.

“It is a matter of honor for the Brazilian State to make every effort so that we know who killed and ordered the killing of Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro,” Dino said.

On April 6, the Brazilian justice system rejected a request from the defense of two former police officers arrested for the murder to be released for the time they have already been in prison.

The fourth Criminal Court of the Court of Justice of Rio de Janeiro maintained the preventive detentions of retired Military Police sergeant Ronnie Lessa and former military police officer Élcio Queiroz.

While she was a Rio de Janeiro councilor, Marielle Franco, an Afro-descendant born in a favela, was a regular whistleblower of the parapolice groups or "militias" that operate in these humble communities.

She was killed in an ambush in downtown Rio de Janeiro by Lessa and Queiroz, both linked to those militias, in a case that was linked to President Jair Bolsonaro.

Shortly after taking office as president, Lula appointed Anielle Franco, Marielle's sister, as Minister of Racial Equality.

hundred years of secrets

Lula's government determined the cessation of secrets for a hundred years dictated by Bolsonaro.

As a result of this decision, the Brazilian government affirmed that there is a vaccination record against covid-19 of former President Bolsonaro in the public administration, who during the pandemic had said that he was not going to be immunized and campaigned against its effectiveness.

The Minister of the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), Vinicius de Carvalho, clarified that the veracity of those documents that are in the archives of the entity is being determined.

Bolsonaro had kept his vaccination book secret for a hundred years and positioned himself against the mandatory nature of the vaccine: he was proud to say that he was going to be the last to receive it.

The CGU record indicates that Bolsonaro would have received the single dose from the Janssen laboratory on July 19, 2021, in a first aid room in Perus, in the north of São Paulo.

The day before, Bolsonaro had been discharged after having spent four days hospitalized for a gastric obstruction in a private hospital in São Paulo.

(Taken from Page 12)

See also:

"I ordered it, they can put that on me": Bolsonaro decorated a suspect in the murder of Marielle Franco