Former police officers Ronnie Lessa and Elcio Queiroz were found guilty by a popular jury. During the trial they admitted their responsibility.
Both assassins of the councilor Marielle Franco and his driver Anderson Gomes were condemned this Thursday in Brazil to 78 and 59 years in prison, after two days of trial.
Marielle She was a 38-year-old activist for the rights of the Afro-Brazilian community and the LGBT community, murdered along with her driver on March 14, 2018. That day they were riddled by Ronnie Lessa and Elcio Queirozformer members of the Rio de Janeiro Military Police, while circulating through a central neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro.
The sentence was celebrated by the relatives of Franco and Gomes present in the courtroom in Rio. Upon hearing the ruling they hugged each other and could not help crying tears of emotion.
“We will continue the fight (…) to defeat what murdered Marielle and Anderson: political violence. Because she was a black woman from the favela, her murderers thought her body was disposable,” said Franco’s then partner, Monica Benicio.
The murder of councilor Marielle Franco shocks Brazil
Meanwhile, after receiving the decision of the popular jury that found the two accused guilty, the judge Lucia Glioche stated that “Justice is sometimes slow, blind (…) but it comes.”
The condemned
Ronnie Lessa and Elcio Queiroz They were sentenced to 78 and 59 years in prison. During the trial, Lessa admitted that he machine-gunned Marielle Franco from a vehicle driven by Queiroz.
During his statement, Lessa maintained that He “blinded” and “went crazy” with a million-dollar offer that he received to assassinate Franco. “They decided to kill for financial gain,” said prosecutor Fabio Vieira, who described Lessa and Queiroz as “sociopaths” without regret.
Source: Ambito
