BRAZIL’S TOP COURT FINDS TWO POLITICIANS GUILTY IN MARIELLE FRANCO KILLING CASE
Read Time:1 Minute, 32 Second
By: Fasasi Hammad
Brazil’s Supreme Court has convicted two politicians for orchestrating the 2018 assassination of Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco, highlighting the deep-rooted connections between politics and organized crime.
In a unanimous ruling on Wednesday, the court found former federal lawmaker Chiquinho Brazão and his brother, Domingos Brazão, a former state legislator, guilty of masterminding the killing.
Franco was shot dead in central Rio alongside her driver, Anderson Gomes, in a crime that shocked the nation and drew international condemnation.
The 38-year-old Black, openly lesbian activist, raised in a favela, had emerged as a vocal critic of Rio’s paramilitary militias. Her murder in March 2018 sparked widespread protests and intensified scrutiny of the city’s powerful criminal networks.
Two former military police officers convicted of carrying out the killings received long prison sentences in 2024.
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The court determined that the Brazão brothers ordered the assassination in retaliation for Franco’s opposition to legislation that would have effectively legitimized land illegally seized by militia groups controlling large areas of Rio.
Presiding Justice Alexandre de Moraes noted that the defendants were deeply embedded within the militia structure. “They didn’t just have contact with the militia. They were the militia,” he said during proceedings.
The court heard that Franco’s murder was intended as a warning to political figures in Rio, with Moraes describing her as “a Black woman who dared to challenge the interests of militia members.”
Rio’s militias, which originated decades ago as self-styled neighborhood protection groups formed by former police and security personnel to combat drug gangs, gradually evolved into powerful criminal enterprises accused of extortion, land grabbing, and exerting strong political influence in the state.
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