Police officer who killed Lula’s party militant in Foz, Brazil, sentenced to prison term

Brazilian authorities have ordered the imprisonment of police officer Jorge Guaranho, a supporter of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who murdered an activist of the Workers’ Party (PT) of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, municipal policeman Marcelo Arruda last July 10 in Foz.

Guaranho burst in shooting and shouting “Here is Bolsonaro” at Arruda’s 50th birthday party, themed PT and Lula, and shot dead the leftist militant, who returned fire and wounded Guaranho before dying.

The assailant was released from the hospital last Wednesday and now a prison order has been issued for his admission to the Paraná Penal Medical Complex, in Pinhais, in the metropolitan region of Curitiba, according to the newspaper ‘Folha de Sao Paulo’ quoting the Public Security Secretariat of Paraná.

Guaranho is accused of homicide but until now he had not been sentenced to prison and had only been sentenced to house arrest, which the family’s lawyers considered “an affront to Justice” after a “crime stinking of political intolerance” and because of the “risk of escape” to a foreign country due to the fact that it is a border city.

Arruda’s murder has further aggravated if possible the political tension in Brazil in an electoral campaign for the October presidential elections in which the main favorites are the outgoing president, Bolsonaro, and Lula himself, who for the moment is the favorite in the polls.