By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Police officials in Rio de Janeiro say that the Greek ambassador to Brazil, Kyriakos Amiridis, may have been a victim of a crime of passion and suspect the diplomat was killed at the home of his wife’s relatives and later put into a car which was burned.
The diplomat was reported missing on Tuesday by his wife after leaving family and friends on Monday night. Police confirmed that the burned car found in the metropolitan region was the one rented by the missing diplomat and that the charred body found inside the vehicle was taken to the medical examiners’ office to be identified.
“We’re now going to do the technical procedures to find out if the body was the ambassador’s,” said sheriff Evaristo Pontes, of the Baixada Fluminense Homicide Police force in Nova Iguaçu on Thursday night.
According to local news reports Amiridis’s wife, Françoise, who is Brazilian, was having an affair with a military police officer. The reports also say that blood was found on a sofa inside the house in Nova Iguaçu and that the furniture was taken by officers for further analysis. According to Globo, the police officer in question arrived at the police station at dawn on Friday with a lawyer for questioning.
Amiridis currently works in Brasilia as head of the Greek embassy and went on vacation in Rio de Janeiro, where he was the European country’s general counsel from 2001 to 2004.
The Greek embassy in Brasilia issued a statement on Thursday, stating that ‘The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Greek Embassy in Brasilia are monitoring the case closely and, in close cooperation with the Brazilian authorities, are taking all appropriate actions’.