Both victims targeted by Brazilian drug trafficking gangs
Recent days have seen reports of a ‘burning body’ discovered in a Seixal dumpster, and a man ‘shot dead’ at the doorway of a gym in Amadora.
Reports have since added some of the background stories that preceded these deaths, suggesting both were due to drug dealing and criminal gangs.
The first incident was called in on the morning of January 29, in Seixal, when a passer-by noticed flames coming out of a rubbish bin, only to be horrified to find a human body inside it, on fire.
At the time, no one could tell even the gender of the body. But it has since transpired to have been that of a 20-year-old Brazilian, Thúlio Fernando Santos Silva, originally from Rio de Janeiro, who “had his first contacts with drug trafficking” in his home country, and “made enemies” there who are believed to have been behind his terrible death.
Whether Thúlio was alive when his body was doused in petrol, and set alight, has still not been established. What is known is that five ‘operatives’ from Brazil’s ‘Comando Vermelho (CV)’ were sent to Portugal to kill him in what appears to have been a ‘settling of scores’.
Thúlio had been working with his father in Montijo, but recently left his father and his job to live with a girlfriend in Amadora, writes Correio da Manhã.
At some point on January 28 he will have been ‘snatched’ by the five men on his trail and taken to an ‘abandoned house’ (CM does not give its location) where he was brutally beaten. As to how he was transported to the dumpster in Seixal, is not explained.
Thúlio’s family is now appealing via social media for money with which to hold a funeral.
Days later in Amadora, Felisberto Dias was gunned down at the doorway of the gym he regularly attended.
He was shot four times by an individual on a motorcycle, who then sped away. Today, CM admits the shooter “could have left the country”.
Authorities believe this incident too could have been orchestrated by a “group of Brazilian criminals” who accused Dias, known as ‘Gnoti’, of stealing hundreds of kilos of drugs… “Motivation is still not clear”, says the paper – but the crime could be related to a murder some weeks ago in Spain, and a kidnap in Lisbon a few days before (…) The kidnapped man may have named Gnoti” as the ringleader of the group behind the supposed drug theft.
The motorcyclist/ shooter is also believed to have been “connected to organised crime”.
As for the victim, Felisberto “had only recently been released from jail” where he served time for sex crimes, but was known to move in the drug trafficking world.
It is here that CM points to the Brazilian gang Primeiro Comando da Capital (a different gang to Comando Vermelho).
In between both these violent incidents, a pair of legs washed up on a beach in Matosinhos. It could be these two are connected to drug trafficking and criminal gangs, but this far there has been no further clarifications.
