They were alone in a rural area of Mato Grosso. The police arrested the suspected killer when he went to the hospital.
Less than a month before the presidential elections in Brazil and after a massive pro-government caravan in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro, a supporter of the president Jair Bolsonaro stabbed and hacked to death a follower of Lula da Silva in a rural area of Mato Grosso.
Wednesday night, Benedito Cardoso42, discussed political issues with Rafael Silva de Oliveira, 24, and the fight ended in tragedy. “Cardoso was defending Lula and the author said that he was defending Bolsonaro,” revealed Victor Donizete de Oliveira Pereira, a delegate of the Civil Police in Confresa, the city in the interior of Brazil where the crime took place.
At a farm in Confresa, a municipality of some 30,000 people in the state of Mato Grosso, Cardoso punched Silva de Oliveira, who punched him back. At that moment, Cardoso took a knife to attack his opponent, who took it from him, chased him and wounded him. With Cardoso on the ground, the murderer finished him off with 15 ax blows. Silva de Oliveira then tried to hide the weapons and escaped.
The police arrested the perpetrator of the crime when he went to a hospital for medical attention. Victor Donizete de Oliveira Pereira, a Civil Police delegate, said that both men were alone on the rural property when a “politically motivated discussion” began.
In the midst of a very polarized electoral campaign in the run-up to the October 2 elections, Lula spoke out on social media about the crime.
“With great sadness I learned the news of the murder of Benedito Cardoso dos Santos, in the rural area of Confresa. Lintolerance took another life. Brazil does not deserve the hatred that has been established in that country. My condolences to Benedito’s family and friends,” Lula wrote on Twitter.
The tension for the elections grew in the last time. “Our freedom is at stake,” Bolsonaro declared at the Alborada Palace, his official residence, before heading towards the Esplanade of the Ministries, a central avenue in Brasilia where he led a civic-military parade in commemoration of the 200 years of the country’s independence from Portugal.
According to the polls, with about three weeks to go before the elections, the leader of the extreme right has a intention to vote around 30%, compared to 45% that Lula would obtainwho already governed the country between 2003 and 2010.
Another crime in the election campaign
The Workers’ Party denounced in early July the murder by “hatred and political violence” of a leader of the force in Foz de Iguazú (Paraná, south) at the hands of a follower of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who also died in the incident.
The Paraná State Police indicated that “it was a discussion” between the two men, without clarifying whether it was politically motivated, according to the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
Marcelo ArrudaPT militant and candidate for vice mayor in the 2020 elections, was celebrating his 50th birthday with a party theme party, when “he was assassinated” by a “Bolsonarist” federal prison police officer, according to a statement from that group.
“We were at the party (…) and around 11:30 (pm) a man appeared who was not invited and who nobody knew, and started shouting ‘Mito’ and other Bolsonaro things from the car. He was with a woman and a baby (…) He pointed a gun and said he was going to come back to kill everyone,” according to Aluízio Palmar, a witness, in an audio sent to the AFP for the PT.
When the policeman identified as Jorge Guaranho returned to the place where the celebration was taking place, Arruda confronted him and “tried to defend himself” with a weapon that he kept in his car, detailed the PT.
The party considered Arruda’s reaction a “heroic act”, which “saved innumerable lives” by killing Guaranho.
With information from the AFP Agency
DB