'This will not stick’: Brazilian president lashes out over alleged links to left-wing politician’s killing

Terrence McCoy, Marina Lopes and Teo Armus. Washington Post. October 30, 2019

RIO DE JANEIRO — For months after Marielle Franco was killed last year, Rio de Janeiro wrestled with questions about who had targeted the city councilwoman — and who had ordered her mysterious, execution-style death.

Authorities seemed to answer one of those questions in March, charging two former police officers with the murder of the leftist politician, a rising star and an advocate for the city’s blacks and poor.

But now their alleged plot appears to have embroiled a new figure: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Late Tuesday night, local media reported that hours before Franco’s murder, one of the alleged killers had visited the other at a tony seaside complex in Rio’s far west side. On the complex’s security books, however, the man allegedly was logged as a visitor to Bolsonaro.

Following the report, the right-wing president — who was in Brasilia the night of Franco’s killing, but has denied any involvement — erupted in a live stream on Facebook. In more than 20 minutes of freewheeling attacks against the “foul, lowlife, immoral media,” he denied any wrongdoing and accused the media and rival politicians of trying to undermine his government.

“I had no reason to kill anyone in Rio de Janeiro,” he said, filming the video at 4 a.m. in the Middle East, where he has spent this week on a diplomatic trip. “This will not stick.”

With his voice breaking at times, Bolsonaro threatened to take away the broadcasting license for Globo, the media organization that first reported the alleged ties between him and the men charged with killing Franco.

“Why this scheming?” he yelled at one point. “Let me govern Brazil! And you, TV Globo, you make my life hell dammit.”

“I shouldn’t lose it,” he said, with a tear trickling down his cheek. “I’m the president of the republic.”

The explosive media reports linking Bolsonaro to Franco’s killing, coupled with his emotional and profane response, threaten to further isolate him at what was already a vulnerable time in his presidency. The country has lurched from one environmental disaster to another. He’s openly feuding with the president-elect of Argentina, one of Brazil’s most important trading partners. He was assailed this week for posting — then quickly deleting — a video that showed him as lion being attacked by a pack of hyenas representing his critics in the media and government, including Brazil’s Supreme Court.

Now that court has to decide whether to open an investigation into Bolsonaro, who has immunity from being tried in the country’s lower courts. Supporters of Franco are calling for an inquiry.

“We demand immediate clarifications,” said Juliano Medeiros, president of Franco’s Socialism and Liberty Party. “Brazil cannot live with any doubt about the link between the President of the Republic and a murder. We demand answers."

Some observers here are beginning wonder whether Bolsonaro is in control of his impulses.

“Bolsonaro’s first reaction to the case may even gain him the support of his base, but a more impartial observer saw an uncontrolled president saying he didn’t kill anyone,” columnist Igor Gielow wrote in the Sao Paulo newspaper Folha.

Lucas de Aragão, director of a political risk company in Brasilia, said the negative publicity could further damage Bolsonaro’s approval ratings, mired in the low 30s. “This is a moment of extreme tension in the government,” he said. “They go hard and they go aggressive and those that like him like this attitude and those who dislike him think he is losing his mind.”

Questions already had circulated about connections between the president and the two men charged with Franco’s killing: Ronnie Lessa, 48, a retired officer who allegedly fired the bullets that killed Franco, and Élcio Vieira de Queiroz, 46, who had allegedly driven Lessa to the scene of the crime.

Before Bolsonaro’s election in 2018, the president and Lessa both lived in the same upscale condominium in Rio de Janeiro. Their children had once dated, according to police reports. In March, scandal erupted when a photo of de Queiroz and Bolsonaro emerged on social media, showing the two men in a friendly embrace.

Bolsonaro had denied knowing both men personally, and police had previously discarded connections between the president and the suspects. But Tuesday night’s reports dragged Bolsonaro yet again into the infamous killing.

A doorman at Bolsonaro’s gated community told Jornal Nacional, a well-respected TV news program, that on March 14, 2018 — the day of Franco’s killing — de Queiroz identified himself as a visitor to Bolsonaro’s residence. When the doorman called that house to confirm, a man he had identified as “Mr. Jair” said to allow the visitor through.

The doorman kept watching de Quieroz’s car on security cameras and saw that the vehicle was heading to Lessa’s home inside the complex instead. So he called the apartment back. Yet “Mr. Jair” said that he knew where de Quieroz was going and to let him continue, the TV news program reported.

Bolsonaro was in the country’s capital of Brasilia that day for two plenary votes, the report said. Prosecutors say they are searching for audio recordings of those phone calls to identify who the doorman talked to that day — and who was in Bolsonaro’s home.

Later that evening, as Franco was in a car heading home, two other vehicles pulled up to hers. Someone began firing at the councilwoman, who died almost instantly. Nine police-issue bullets were lodged in her body.

Franco, who was 38, had been elected in 2016 as the only black woman on Rio de Janeiro’s 51-person city council. A left-wing lesbian activist and champion for the rights of Afro-Brazilians, she emerged as a powerful critic of Brazil’s security forces — and a voice for the civilians who had been killed in a crackdown on poor neighborhoods, much like the one she was raised in.

Following her death, her name became a worldwide symbol of the fight against racial oppression. Crowds around the globe protested her murder with the chant, “Marielle Presente”: Marielle Is Here.

All the while, Bolsonaro remained nearly silent on the matter as he ascended to the presidency, taking office in January after a campaign that polarized the South American country. And his critics noticed.

“The execution of Marielle, and the election of the current president, revealed to the world that we are racist, that we are sexist, misogynist, LGBT-phobic,” Franco’s partner, Mônica Benício, told the New York Times earlier this year.

Brazilian officials took nearly a year to unravel the case, finally charging the two alleged hit men in March. But further details — namely, who ordered the killing and why — remained unanswered.

In his video early on Wednesday morning, Bolsonaro also pointed fingers at the Wilson Witzel, the governor of Rio de Janeiro state, accusing him of leaking details of an investigation by Rio’s police.

Witzel denied those charges outright. “I’m being unfairly attacked,” he said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg News. “Yet I’ll continue to seek balance and common sense in personal and institutional relations.”

The president’s lawyer, Frederick Wassef, also appeared on TV to deny the new claims about Bolsonaro.

“It’s a lie, a typo, something,” Wassef said. “I say with absolute certainty and challenge anyone to prove otherwise. It is a lie, a fraud, a scam, to attack the president of the republic."