On January 18, 2002, Celso Daniel, mayor of the city of Santo André, on the outskirts of São Paulo, and coordinator of the campaign that would elect Lula da Silva as president at the end of that year, left a steakhouse in São Paulo accompanied by his right-hand man Sérgio Silva, known as Sombra.
The car, driven by Sombrawas then chased, shot and cornered by three vehicles. Two days later, the mayor’s body was found with eight gunshots to the face and signs of torture. Sombra escaped unharmed.
According to the police, a group of six criminals, led by Ivan Silva, whose nickname is Monstercarried out the crime by mistake. Monster He said that the group was chasing a merchant, was lost by him and therefore decided to kidnap and kill the first passenger of an expensive vehicle that they saw on the way.
Upon learning that the police had classified the murder as a “common crime”, a brother of Celso Daniel asked for the case to be reopened, alleging political motivation. The Public Prosecutor’s Office followed the thesis, according to which Sombra he was the mastermind of the crime because he was involved in a corruption scheme that the mayor intended to expose and which included beneficiaries such as José Dirceu, Lula’s right-hand man in the PT.
Still according to the thesis, Sombra he had asked Dionízio Severo, a criminal who had escaped from a prison by helicopter two days before the crime, to hire that group of criminals.
Conspiracy theories gained momentum in public opinion because, months later, Severo was stabbed in prison. And Sergio Earthe criminal in whose house Severo had taken refuge, and Otávio Mercier, a police investigator who had called him the day before the kidnapping, ended up shot dead afterwards.
Antonio, the waiter who served the mayor and Sombra on the night of the kidnapping, he was also executed. Paulo Brito, witness to this latest crime, idem. Iran Redua, a funeral director who recognized the body, and Carlos Printes, a coroner who confirmed signs of torture, turned up dead in the following two years.
The PSDB, PT’s main rival at the time, then accused Lula’s party of being behind the crime for all these years.
Arthur Virgilio Neto, the party’s senator, said that the case did not let the (Lula) government sleep, Álvaro Dias, also a senator, considered the president unworthy of popular respect and deputy Mara Gabrilli accused Gilberto Carvalho, Lula’s secretary, of being “the man in the black car” who took money from Santo André to Dirceu.
Carvalho repudiated his rival’s statements, saying that the crime “pained him personally”, Dirceu has been saying that the PSDB tried “irresponsibly” to link him to the scheme, Lula always reaffirms that accusing the PT in the case is “an indignity” on the right.
The memory of this tragic crime comes with the announcement in the press that the indignant PT and PSDB are considering an electoral alliance for 2026 precisely in Santo André, the city managed by the murdered mayor, in the name of the incurable realpolitik Brazilian that heals everything.
Leave a Reply