Marielle Franco Arrests Raise Suspicions About Brazil Militia Ties to Bolsonaro Family
Chris Dalby
Two former police officers with links to a militia group have been arrested in the high-profile killing of a Brazilian human rights activist. The same militia may also have ties to the family of Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, raising further questions.
Authorities have accused Ronnie Lessa, a former police sergeant and expert sniper, of shooting Marielle Franco, an activist and councilwoman who had been a vocal critic of the deployment of federal security forces to Rio de Janeiro’s poor districts. Élcio de Queiroz, a dismissed military police officer, allegedly acted as Lessa’s getaway driver, G1 Globo reported.
A later police raid of a Rio home linked to Lessa turned up 117 M-16 assault rifles. Investigators said that Lessa, who had been forced to retire from the police after being severely injured in a car bomb attack, was a contract killer and gunrunner for militia group “Escritório do Crime†(Office of Crime).
Read more at: https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/marielle-franco-arrests-brazil-militia-bolsonaro/
I hope there is nothing there... that said, Latin American politics are often going to be much more uglier than what we are accustomed to. No wonder Shannon Bream brought this up on her show.
