The Supreme Federal Court (STF) of Brazil issued a new historic ruling this Wednesday. Last September, he sentenced former President Jair Bolsonaro and his collaborators to 27 years and three months in prison for attempted coup d’état. The new opinion illuminates with intensity the relationships between crime and politics in Rio de Janeiro. The brothers Domingos and Chiquinho Brazão were considered the intellectual authors of the murder of the councilor and activist Marielle Franco and his driver, Anderson Gomes, committed in March 2018. They face similar or higher sentences than those of the perpetrators, already sentenced in 2024: about 75 years.
Upon hearing the sentence, Marielle Franco’s mother, Marinete Silva, and the daughter of the PSOL councilor, Luyara, could not contain their emotion. They had to be treated by emergency services.
They are about to be fulfilled six years since that event that shocked part of Brazilians. At that time, the conditions to elucidate what had happened were not those of the present. Bolsonaro paved his rise to power and, as the elections approached, a wall of impunity also rose. Since the return to the presidency of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Those retaining walls could be demolished.
Alexandre de Moraes, the same judge who served as the leading voice in the process against Bolsonarostressed that the Franco case has mixed the political issue with “misogyny, racism and discrimination”. Marielle, the magistrate recalled, “was a poor black woman who challenged the interests of the militiamen. What stronger message could be sent? And in the misogynistic minds of the perpetrators, who would care about that?”
The paramilitary issue
The double murder was the result of the Clashes between the Brazão and members of the leftist PSOL in the Rio legislature. The background of the tension was not only the brothers’ real estate businesses but also their ties with the paramilitary groups who control several poor territories of the “wonderful city”, and are known as militias. The Brazão, De Moraes remarked, “They not only had contact with the militia. They were the militia. They participated in the militia. One as the executor of the militia acts, the others as great political influence, the political guarantee of the maintenance of those areas that are under their control.”
About the former chief of the Rio de Janeiro Police, Rivaldo Barbosa, who at the time had to investigate the crime in which he was indirectly involvedMoraes said that although there is no evidence that he participated in both homicides, he accepted bribes and “directed the offensive in another direction to try to guarantee total impunity.” He must spend 18 years locked up. Two police officers and a Brazão advisor were also sentenced to sentences that must be stipulated.
“If the interest of the militias – true armed criminal organizations with political action – was to eliminate Marielle to send a message not only to the PSOL, but to any force that opposed the expansion of its territorial and institutional power, Moraes’ vote makes it clear that the crime had a political purpose: preserve dominance and influence,” said the Rio newspaper The Globe. “It is no coincidence that, where the militia operates, the law of silence usually prevails. The trial, in this context, also has an institutional symbolism: that of affirming that democracy reacts.”
Amnesty International has highlighted the importance of the STF ruling. “The trial of the intellectual authors of a crime against a human rights defender is a milestone in the fight against political impunity and it is necessary that this result become protection for all human rights defenders in Brazil,” says an excerpt from the note, which describes the case as “emblematic.” For Amnesty, the sentence “will not be enough” to the extent that it can be repeated. The action of the militias in the “wonderful city” leaves dozens of dead every year.
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