Civil Police Tried to Buy Militia Member Confession in Marielle Case, Says Dodge

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A document obtained on Wednesday, October 30th, by newspaper El País details charges of failures and frauds made by former Federal Prosecutor General (PGR) Raquel Dodge against the investigations of the Marielle case developed by the Civil Police of Rio.

The accusations were made in the petition for the “federalization” of the case — involvement by federal law enforcement agencies — filed by her at the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) on the last day she held the position as PGR; the case is confidential under a judicial order.

The Court has not yet decided the case and, when asked, the current Prosecutor General’s Office, headed by PGR Augusto Aras, has not said whether it will maintain the request for federalization, saying it will not advance “positions on issues that may be the subject of a demonstration by its members”.

While sparing the Rio Prosecutor’s Office from criticism of failures and frauds, Dodge placed more emphasis on the differences between civil police officers, prosecutors, federal police officers and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office on the lines of investigation of possible offenders, who remain unknown after more than a year and a half of investigations, with changes in command and setbacks and differences in versions.

The latest chapter was the effort of civilian police and prosecutors to determine if there was any involvement of President Jair Bolsonaro with the alleged murderers, because a condo superintendent stated in a deposition that on the day of the crime one of the parties involved, former police officer Elcio Queiroz, had requested and obtained authorization from the president to enter his condo, a development disclosed by TV Globo’s Jornal Nacional.

Rio’s Public Prosecutor Office itself, however, said on Wednesday that the statements made by the officials contradicted the recordings in the hands of the authorities, even though doubts still remain on the matter.

The imbroglio over the superintendent’s testimony – and his leak to the press – are not exactly unprecedented in an investigation marked by twists and turns, where a city councilor, as well as a militia member in prison during the time of the murder, have been suspects.

From the “judicial pardon” for militia members in exchange for false confessions, to the detective inspector, said to have guided the false testimony, these are signs of an almost generalized “contamination” of the local police structure, says Dodge in the document.

Based on this debacle, she called for the federalization of part of the murder case of the city councilor and her driver Anderson Gomes. According to the former PGR, in Rio there is a “promiscuous relationship” between the security forces and the militia, which is preventing the principals behind the crime from being reached.

“Such contamination, in addition to generating evident inefficiency (…), suggests that there will be harmful actions carried out by criminals infiltrated in the police, with absolute certainty,” she wrote.

The criminals’ goal would be to slow down the investigation and hinder the collection of evidence. “There has been failure and inadequacy in the investigative work, and the situation remains compromised and unfavorable to an unbiased investigation of the facts related to the principals,” says Dodge.

These alleged irregularities committed by the Rio de Janeiro police during the course of the investigation of the case came to light after the Federal Police, at the request of the PGR, opened an inquiry to investigate potential obstructions and frauds in the case.

Much of this material was used to support Dodge’s request for federalization, which, if accepted by the Superior Court of Justice, will be limited to determining who the principals are: she denounced Domingos Brazão, a council member removed from the Rio de Janeiro Audit Court and former leader of the PMDB in the Legislative Assembly of Rio, for obstructing the investigations and asked that he be investigated as the “mastermind” behind the assassinations.

However, on Wednesday prosecutor Letícia Emily, in charge of the Marielle case in Rio’s Prosecutors Office, said that “there is no concrete evidence” of Brazão’s participation in the crime.

Competing versions aside, Dodge outlines a gloomy scenario of the situation in Rio de Janeiro. According to her, the Federal Police investigation is “one of the most conclusive pieces of evidence of such contamination [of the state police]”.

This document contains “several references to the “Office of Crime” [a militia group suspected of having murdered Marielle and Anderson], to the militias spread throughout the city, their murders-for-hire, the involvement of police or former police officers, in a scenario of complete impunity. Dodge further states that “not even federal intervention in the state of Rio in 2018 was able to reverse” this problem.

In one of the most iconic passages of the document, the then PGR states that detective inspector Giniton Lages, who was primarily responsible for the investigations that pointed to Lessa and Elcio as the executioners, tried to pressure militia member Orlando Oliveira de Araújo, aka Orlando Curicica, to admit to having been contracted by city councilor Marcelo Siciliano to kill Marielle.

The militiaman is said to have refused. The detective inspector then allegedly put forward a counteroffer: if Araújo only admitted that he had been sounded out by the deputy to commit the murder, he would be “granted judicial pardon”. Detective Lages supposedly said that, in another case in which Curicica was charged with murder, he would possibly not be “indicted”, that is, he would not stand trial.

According to Orlando Curicica, Lages said that he had gone to the penitentiary “dreaming of his confession”. In May 2018, the possibility of Araújo signing a whistle-blower plea bargain agreement was discussed in the press. The detective’s proposal that the militiaman falsely incriminate city councilor Marcelo Siciliano, however, only came to light in testimony made to the Federal Police.

Dodge also criticizes the homicide police officer who headed the specialist’s investigations, because he “had directed Rodrigo Ferreira, who clearly lied and delayed the investigation of the murders” and “corrected details” of the false testimony he gave.

Information leaks, common in investigations such as Operation Lava Jato, are also criticized by Dodge and viewed as obstacles to investigations in the Marielle case. “The Federal Police investigation confirmed the breach of confidentiality of the Civil Police investigations, with leaks to the press of information crucial to the search for the truth about the murders,” the former PGR wrote.

Source: El País