The man accused of killing Rio de Janeiro's leftist city councilor Mariel Franco, 38, in 2018, confessed to police in exchange for a reduced future sentence, the Brazilian government revealed on Tuesday evening. He's a former military police officer turned hitman named Ronnie Lisa and he was imprisoned for five years in the case. The content of the confession is still secret, but the authorities consider it crucial to discovering who ordered his killing. A new and little-known politician outside Rio, the resolution of her case is one of the great causes of the Brazilian left.
Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski hastily appeared on Tuesday to announce that the judge had approved the alleged killer's confession. This means that the details of his testimony have been compared with other sources and the story is appropriate. “We know that this award-winning confession, which is a means of obtaining evidence, provides very important elements that make us believe that we will soon have a solution to the murder of Councilwoman Mariel Franco,” he added.
The government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been under pressure from the first day of office to resolve this issue, something that there was no hope for during the government of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, with whose family he had an affair. With Lisa. He hopes that in exchange for confessing to those who commissioned him to kill Franco, several sentences will be combined, and he will receive a sentence ranging from 20 to 30 years, according to the newspaper. Or globe.
Pressure on Lula comes from civil society and also from the Council of Ministers because the president has appointed Aniel Franco, the chancellor's younger sister, as Minister of Racial Equality. During these years, a large number of police commissioners, prosecutors and judges took up this case. Many theories have circulated and several suspects have been identified as the masterminds, but the only truly relevant development was the arrest in 2019 of the alleged shooter and another military police officer, Elcio Quiroz, accused of driving the car used in the attack.
Mariel was killed on the night of March 14, 2018 while driving a car in downtown Rio. The driver died next to her. The politician's press director miraculously survived. They were shot from a car parked next to them while the killer opened fire. Lisa is considered one of the best marksmen in the Rio Military Police.
It was noteworthy that the Minister called on the press to report on a procedure, a related one, in a secret case. But the entire cabinet is under pressure from President Lula to deliver good news to Brazilians given that the latest opinion polls have revealed a decline in popularity.
Lisa is imprisoned in Campo Grande, a maximum security prison 1,400 kilometers from his home city of Rio. The man accused of carrying out the consultant's murder was also imprisoned there but was transferred to Rio after he offered to cooperate with police and confessed. Now he follows the person accused of pulling the trigger.
Mariel's widow, Monica Benicio, who imitated her wife and is now an adviser in Rio, tweeted after the minister's appearance: “We want concrete answers. I hope the next press conference is to make a concrete statement truly committed to justice.”
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