Brazil’s Bolsonaro Furious as His Name Is Cited in Murder Case
Brazil’s Bolsonaro Furious as His Name Is Cited in Murder Case
(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, angry over a report that cited his name in the investigation of a high-profile murder of a Rio de Janeiro councilwoman last year, lashed out during a state visit to Saudi Arabia.
Globo TV reported Tuesday night that the doorman of Bolsonaro’s gated community in Rio said he received authorization from someone at the president’s house to admit one of the accused killers of Marielle Franco into the community, where the other suspect in the case also lived. Globo added, however, that Bolsonaro was in Brasilia that day, according to records of the lower house, where he was a deputy.
From Saudi Arabia, the furious president broadcast a live message on social media about an hour after Globo published its story, denying any wrongdoing. In unrestrained remarks that started at 3:50 a.m. in Riyadh and went on for more than 20 minutes, he repeatedly accused Globo of trying to undermine his government and Rio Governor Wilson Witzel of leaking details of an investigation by the Rio’s police.
Bolsonaro, who’s on a tour of the Middle East and Asia, also gave an interview to a competing TV network, Record.
“I’m available to be heard, I’d love to be heard,” he told Record TV, adding he had never heard of Franco before her death and accusing Witzel of playing dirty to defeat him in the next presidential elections.
The March 2018 murder of Franco, a 38-year-old black politician from one of Rio’s poorest and most violent communities, shocked Brazilians who have since demanded an explanation for the crime.
Police Investigation
Witzel responded that he never interferes in police investigations and had not disclosed details of the case. ‘I’m being unfairly attacked,” he said in an emailed statement. “Yet I’ll continue to seek balance and common sense in personal and institutional relations.”
Following a request from the president, Justice Minister Sergio Moro asked that the federal police starts its own inquiry into the case. He said the fact that Bolsonaro wasn’t in Rio that day points to inconsistency in the doorman’s testimony.
“That inconsistency suggests possible error in the investigation carried out in Rio de Janeiro or a possible attempt to unduly involve the president’s name in the crime,” he wrote in a letter addressed to the country’s prosecutor general.
So far, the two former officers have been charged with carrying out the killing but several questions -- included who else might have been involved in the murder and who ordered it, and why -- remain unanswered. Last week, public prosecutors accused a former member of Rio’s state audit court as being the mastermind of the crime.
Bolsonaro was elected last October after running on a conservative platform that promised a crackdown on crime and corruption.
To contact the reporters on this story: Walter Brandimarte in Brasilia at wbrandimarte@bloomberg.net;Sabrina Valle in Rio de Janeiro at svalle@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, John Harney, Karen Leigh
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