00:00Mireille Franco was assassinated because she got in the way of a fraudulent land-grab scheme
00:05run by a former lawmaker and his cronies. The Supreme Court in Brazil has convicted the men
00:10involved in the murder of Mireille Franco, a black woman, a counsellor, a human rights activist.
00:16Ultimately, she knew too much and wouldn't stay silent. Let's join Tim Vickery. He's waiting for
00:20us in Rio. Tim, the introduction, I think, just scratched the surface. Tell us who was Mireille
00:26Franco. An excellent representative of the new Brazil. She was a left-wing politician with a
00:36huge future ahead of her, 38 years of age when she was assassinated. She was eloquent. She was
00:44bisexual. And she was very, very firmly rooted in the poor communities where she grew up. And she
00:51had a huge power of mobilisation. And it's that that appears to have cost her her life
00:58nearly eight years ago in this Murder, Inc. mafia-style hit. One of those cases, Mark,
01:04that really gains traction because, I don't know about the State of the Union, but this particular
01:10case tells us so much about the state of Brazil. Tell us about that, Tim, about what this case
01:16exposes in terms of what happens in public life in Brazil. Well, the one side of this is a kind
01:24of
01:24old Brazil against the new Brazil, the old reactionary Brazil. One of the Supreme Court
01:30ministers today, Alexandre de Moraes, he said that the perpetrators of her murder had the mentality of
01:3750, 100 years ago where you could kill a poor black woman and you wouldn't expect that there will be
01:43any
01:44repercussions. So there is this, a new, confident, urban, sophisticated, feminine Brazil against an old
01:54reactionary Brazil. There's also that left-right political divide. This murder happened when Brazil
02:03was on the move right, not long before the election victory of Jair Bolsonaro. And it became a slogan,
02:11who killed Marielle Franco, on whose orders, why? And part of the reason that this took on so much
02:20traction was that it was clear that under a right-wing government, the authorities did not really want
02:28to investigate this. In fact, we have subsequently discovered that the police chief who's been sentenced
02:34to date was receiving money in order to look the other way. The police chief, Hivaldo Barbosa,
02:42he got off the murder charge on reasonable doubt, but he's been sentenced to 18 years in prison
02:47for obstruction of justice. And there's another huge angle to this as well, which is the role of
02:54militias. Now, you often hear about the drug traffic in urban Brazil taking control of areas,
03:00also militias doing the same thing. Now, these militias involving a lot of off-duty or retired
03:08police forces, force officials, but also those inside the state. And one of the judges today,
03:18he said, it really is astounding and quite worrying the extent to which the state has been infiltrated
03:25by a mafia organisation who intend to use the levers of the state for their own nefarious purposes.
03:32In this case, it's a land grab. It's these militias trying to control territories, trying to authorise
03:41house building, and then tax the local residents for all of the public services. So essentially,
03:48it's militias setting themselves up as an alternative state. Always, Mark, where there is a power vacuum,
03:54it's filled by something, be it the drug traffic, or be it these militias. So, so many of these things
04:01have come to light in this trial. It's one of those cases that takes on a huge aspect because of
04:07that.
04:08Important words from one of the judges, Carmen Lucia, the only female judge on the Supreme Court there.
04:17She said that how many Marielle's will Brazil allow to be murdered until the idea of justice is
04:23resurrected in this country of so many indignations? The sister of Marielle Franco, Aniele Franco,
04:31she's Lula's Minister for Racial Equality. She said today, we're not celebrating, there's nothing to
04:37celebrate, but at least we can take a step forward knowing that impunity has, in this case, at least
04:44been overcome. Tim Vickery, thank you as always for bringing the clarity that you do every time to each
04:51story that you bring to us from Brazil. Marielle Franco clearly has an immense legacy, which shines
04:56through in the words that you brought to us, the conviction of those who conspired to kill Marielle Franco
05:02because she, lawmaker, local counsellor, black woman, human rights activist, got in the way of their land-grab
05:10fraudulent scheme. Tim Vickery, with all the details there from Rio.
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