Mother of Brazilian Killed in Nicaragua Asks Lula for Help
Maria Jose Da Costa seeks to get a meeting with Lula to present the case of her daughter Rayneia Gabrielle Da Costa Lima Rocha, murdered in Managua in July 2018.
HAVANA TIMES – Maria Jose Da Costa, mother of the young Brazilian Rayneia Gabrielle Da Costa Lima Rocha, murdered during the 2018 protests in Nicaragua, asked the current president of Brazil, Lula Da Silva, for help in clearing up the crime against the medical student, in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Diario O Globo.
According to the mother, “the Brazilian government has turned its back on the only Brazilian victim of the repression perpetrated by the government of Daniel Ortega,” and with the return to power of Lula she has “a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel.”
The student’s mother seeks a meeting with Lula to present her daughter’s case and that his government helps her to “investigate and contribute to the trial and conviction of the real culprit” of her daughter’s death.
She assures that with the government of “Lula I have hope, he talks to all countries and hopefully he will talk to Ortega to solve my daughter’s case.”
Rayneia Gabrielle Da Costa Lima Rocha, 31, died of massive internal bleeding after receiving two bullet wounds in the thorax and abdomen when she was driving on her way home from work in a hospital on the night of Monday, July 23, 2018. She had driven by a sector controlled by paramilitary groups on the orders of Daniel Ortega’s regime.
Her body was repatriated to Brazil
The mother assures that the government of former Brazilian president, Michel Terner, turned its back on them during the murder of her daughter and they were only able to repatriate her body to Pernambuco, where they are originally from.
“We were only able to repatriate my daughter’s body thanks to the support of the former governor of Pernambuco, where we are from. Since then, nobody has helped us, and I want Lula to help me,” said Maria Jose, who assures that the paramilitary Pierson Gutierrez Solis was not the one who shot her daughter. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for homicide and possession of a firearm, however, was released on July 23, 2019, under an Amnesty Law.
According to Maria Jose, her daughter was not involved in political activities and on the night of the murder. She was in fact returning from the hospital where she worked. “I want to know who the real culprit was, so that he be sentenced to prison. The Nicaraguan government must be held accountable for the murder of my daughter, because I am sure that the released confessed murdered is covering up for a military man who works for the State,” she told the Brazilian newspaper.
This is so heartbreaking, and there are so many other mothers who experienced the same pain of losing a son or daughter.