Spain Calls for Eight Years Imprisonment for Brazilian Military Officer That Carried Cocaine

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Spanish justice system has definitively quantified the value of the cocaine seized on June 25th at the Seville airport with Sergeant Manoel Silva Rodrigues, a member of the crew of one of the delegation’s aircraft on which Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was traveling to a summit in Osaka, Japan.

The 37 kilograms of narcotics that the Civil Guard found in his luggage during a search, as specified in the Prosecutor General’s statement which El País accessed, was valued at exactly €1,419,262.22 (approximately R$6.6 million).

In this document, in which the representative of the Prosecutor’s Office asks that the only defendant arrested for this confiscation be sentenced to eight years in prison and a fine of four million euros (R$18.2 million), points to the forthcoming judgment of the Brazilian officer, imprisoned in Seville since his detention.

The prosecutor’s text details that Sergeant Silva Rodriguez was one of the 21 crew members of the Brazilian Air Force’s BRS08 aircraft that made a stopover that day at the Seville airport.

When he got off the aircraft and passed through customs control, “a suitcase, a garment bag with a uniform and a backpack with belongings, and 37 rectangular blocks of a substance were seized in the suspect’s luggage by members of the Civil Guard”.

After examining them, the investigators confirmed that the cocaine was 80.14 percent pure and that it was being carried by the detainee “to be sold to third parties” that police investigations have not been able to identify so far.

The Prosecutor General’s Office considers that these facts are a crime against public health, aggravated by the “notorious significance of the confiscated substance,” which is why it calls for eight years imprisonment and a millionaire fine.

The day after his arrest, Silva Rodriguez was taken to prison, where he remains. The investigators consider that the Brazilian military officer was a simple mule or human shipment and that he had a meeting in the hotel, where he and the rest of the crew were headed to rest during the stopover in Seville, with a person who would be taking care of the drugs.

The circumstances in which the drug was located – in the suitcase without being hidden among the clothes, suggest to investigators that the sergeant believed that he would not be under any kind of customs control for being part of the Brazilian president’s delegation on official travel.

The arrest in Spain of a member of Bolsonaro’s delegation sparked great controversy in Brazil. During the campaign that led him to the presidency, he pledged to fight crime and drugs like never before in the country. The Brazilian Ministry of Defense quickly rushed to issue a statement in which it “repudiated” the military officer’s actions and showed its willingness to cooperate with the Spanish authorities to clarify what had occurred.

The Brazilian president himself described the event, in his Twitter account, as “unacceptable” and demanded “immediate investigation and severe punishment of those responsible”. Six Brazilian military personnel traveled to the Andalusian capital last week to question the prisoner on his alleged connections with Brazilian drug traffickers and the Brazilian Army itself.

Source: El País