Friday, December 26, 2014

Journalist Who Denounced Corruption in Brazilian City Slain

12/26/2014

RIO DE JANEIRO – Journalist and attorney Marcos de Barros Leopoldo Guerra, who wrote a blog on which he denounced cases of corruption in Ubatuba, a small city on the coast of Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, was shot to death, police said Wednesday.

Guerra, 51, was gunned down at his home on Tuesday by unknown killers who arrived on a motorcycle and did not steal anything, according to the bulletin issued by the Sao Paulo State Militarized Police.

The police are investigating the possibility that the crime may have been committed in revenge for one of the articles Guerra wrote in his “Ubatuba Cobra” blog, in which he questioned the authorities over the alleged diversion of public funds.

According to the police report, the victim’s father said that he was in one of the rooms of the house when he heard the sound of a motorcycle accelerating and later four shots.

Some of the neighbors, meanwhile, said that the killers were two men who arrived on the motorcycle and opened fire from outside the home through a kitchen window, where they could see Guerra.

The journalist, who had receiving threats over the content of his articles, was struck by bullets in the face, the back and the abdomen.

“He was a rather well-known reporter in the city. One of the hypotheses that we’re investigating is that the crime may have been motivated by one of his publications on the blog, which he had written for several years,” said Ubatuba Civil Police chief Fausto Cardoso.

Cardoso said that the victim’s father told law enforcement authorities that his son had received threats for some time but he never reported them to the police.

According to statistics released this month in Geneva by the Press Emblem Campaign, Brazil, with four murders of journalists so far this year, is the 10th-most-dangerous country for media personnel.


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