Rio de Janeiro // Greece’s ambassador to Brazil was murdered in a plot hatched by his Brazilian wife and her police officer lover, who confessed to the crime, police said.
Kyriakos Amiridis, 59, was killed on Monday by the officer, Sergio Gomez Moreira, said Evaristo Pontes, a homicide investigator in the Rio police.
Amiridis’s charred body was found in Rio in his burnt-out rental car on Thursday, a day after his wife, Francoise de Souza Oliveira, declared him missing.
Ms Oliveira, 40, and Mr Moreira, 29, both admitted to having an affair, police said.
The pair are in custody, along with Mr Moreira’s 24-year-old cousin, Eduardo Moreira de Melo, who allegedly also took part.
According to the homicide division chief, Ms Oliveira denied participating in the murder itself, but confessed she knew of the crime.
Amiridis, who was appointed ambassador this year, had been on a family holiday with his wife since December 21, spending Christmas with her family north of Rio de Janeiro. They had been due to fly back to the capital Brasilia on January 9.
His wife had originally told police that he had left the Rio apartment they were staying in, taken the car and not returned.
But her story contained contradictions, and after Amiridis’s body was found in the burnt-out car under a bridge, police took her in for more questioning, and also detained Mr Moreira.
Traces of blood were reportedly found on a sofa in the apartment Amiridis and his wife had been staying in, leading investigators to believe he had been killed there, before his body was placed in the rental car and driven to the spot where it was discovered.
Mr Pontes said that Ms Oliveira had offered Mr Moirera’s cousin the equivalent of $25,000 (Dh91,800) to help with the murder.
Mr Moreira said that he and Amiridis had had a fight and that he strangled the ambassador in self-defence.
Amiridis met his wife when he served as Greece’s consul general in Rio from 2001 to 2004. The couple have a 10-year-old daughter.
A Greek police team was heading to Brazil to take part in the investigation, while Greece’s ambassador in Argentina was travelling to Brasilia, Athens said.
In a letter to the Greek government, Brazilian president Michel Temer sent his condolences and conveyed his government’s commitment to conducting a “rigorous” investigation.
“The Brazilian people do not accept this type of behaviour and we apologise to the entire Greek population,” said the director of Rio’s homicide division, Rivaldo Barbosa.
He said the murder was “isolated” and a crime of passion that had nothing to do with Rio’s elevated levels of violence.
Rio de Janeiro, though picturesque, has a reputation as a dangerous place. The host city of the 2016 Olympics has seen crime rates soar in recent months, fuelled by drug gang violence.
Hit hard by Brazil’s worst recession in more than a century, Rio de Janeiro state is facing bankruptcy and struggling to deal with the violent crime that has long dogged the area.
* Agence France-Presse
