A former TV crime show host and state legislator accused of commissioning killings to boost ratings turned himself in to authorities on Friday and was jailed on homicide and drug trafficking charges.
Authorities spent four days looking for Wallace Souza in the jungle city of Manaus after a warrant was issued for his arrest on charges of drug trafficking, gang formation and weapons possession.
Souza has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, but a state legislative committee ousted him from his post last week.
A new warrant was issued for the 2007 killing of drug trafficker Cleomir Pereira Bernardino, though it was not one of the five slayings under investigation that appeared on his Canal Livre crime show, police spokeswoman Emanuelle Araujo said.
Souza is accused of renting the car that Bernardino’s killers used in their attack, the homicide arrest warrant signed by Judge Mirza Telma said.
The judge that issued the other warrant, Mauro Antony, described Souza as the “mentor” of a gang that killed rival drug traffickers.
Souza had remained free because of legislative immunity that prevents Brazilian lawmakers from arrest on most charges unless they are caught in the act. But he lost that immunity after being stripped of his political status.
Authorities say Souza’s alleged crimes appear to have served him in two ways: They eliminated drug-trafficking rivals, and boosted ratings.
Souza became a media personality after a career as a police officer that ended in disgrace.
He started Canal Livre in the 1980s on a local commercial station in Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s largely lawless Amazonas state.
It became extremely popular among Manaus’ 1.7 million residents before going off the air late last year as police intensified their investigation.
The show featured Souza in a studio, railing against rampant crime, punctuated with often exclusive footage of arrests, crime scenes and drug seizures.
One clip showed a reporter approaching a freshly burned corpse, covering his nose with his shirt and breezily remarking that “it smells like barbecue.” Police say the victim was one of the five allegedly murdered at Souza’s behest.
In an interview in August, Souza denied any role in that killing and all others. He said his reporters managed to get so quickly to crime scenes because of well-placed sources and monitoring scanners for police radio dispatches.
The show also posted workers at police stations, and at the Manaus morgue, where word often came first about newly discovered bodies.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
At a calligraphy class in Hanoi, Hoang Thi Thanh Huyen slides her brush across the page to form the letters and tonal marks of Vietnam’s unique modern script, in part a legacy of French colonial rule. The history of romanized Vietnamese, or Quoc Ngu, links the arrival of the first Christian missionaries, colonization by the French and the rise to power of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It is now reflected in the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers. A month after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited,
RSS