One of the main drug dealers in Rio de Janeiro, Aílton Guimarães Jorge, better known as Capitão Guimarães, will remain under house arrest in Rio de Janeiro. On Wednesday (28), Justice Dias Toffoli, of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), refused to grant an injunction to revoke the preventive detention of one of the heads of the Rio de Janeiro racket. Recently, the bicheiro’s defense had asked for the device to be removed by requesting that his detention be revoked.
According to Toffoli, he could not grant Guimarães’ defense request before hearing from the 4th Criminal Court of São Gonçalo, which is responsible for the bicheiro’s arrest.
“There is no way to assess the plausibility of the right alleged before hearing the court complained of,” the minister ruled.
Prison
Capitão Guimarães has been serving a prison sentence since December 2022, when he was the target of Operation Sicários, which investigates the murder of a pastor in São Gonçalo. According to the investigation, the bicheiro was the mastermind of the crime that took place in 2020,
After spending two days behind bars at the Federal Police, the bicheiro was granted the right to remain under house arrest due to his state of health. At 82, he is treating cancer and dealing with heart failure.
Who is Capitão Guimarães?
Aílton Guimarães Jorge is ex-military and has a long history of criminal charges, arrests and legal maneuvers to escape from prison. He served in the Information Operations Detachment (DOI) in Rio de Janeiro during his time in the army. The DOI was one of the main means of political repression during the military regime.
Capitán Guimarães had already shown deviations since the mid-1970s. At the time, he even used the power he had gained as a means of repression. He extorted smugglers in Rio’s Port Zone.
He joined the political repression when he was still a lieutenant in the 1960s – he was an intelligence officer. During this period, he was summoned to persecute trade unionists, especially railway workers in the Baixada Fluminense. At the time, he summoned members of the Civil and Military Police to help pursue, locate and dismantle the alleged subversive apparatuses. They were said to be responsible for the recurrent derailment of trains.
After being transferred to the DOI, Guimarães and some of his subordinates were co-opted by a gang that practiced extortion against smugglers. Basically, they seized irregular goods – ranging from whisky to jeans, perfumes and other illegally imported products – and then resold them to the owners themselves or to competitors.
However, a pair of MPs ended up catching Guimarães and his cronies in the act. They were denounced and taken to jail. The case was dropped soon after, due to abuses by the investigators.
After being released, Guimarães was transferred to a bureaucratic unit. There, he was pressured to resign from the army, which happened in 1981. At the time, the then captain had already managed to win the sympathy of bicheiro Ângelo Maria Longas, or Uncle Scrooge, who was Guimarães’ cellmate. Uncle Patinhas was considered one of the most powerful bicheiros of the time, and gave the Captain a chance to take over a small defaulting bicheiro.
Guimarães rose to the top of the bicho game. Years later, he became one of the first presidents of the League of Special Group Samba Schools (Liesa). With his experience in the army, he helped the top brass organize the territorial division of Rio de Janeiro, as well as teaching them how to make the extractions. He had a share of the game in Niterói, but also expanded the business to Espírito Santo.
He was president of the Unidos de Vila Isabel samba school. With this, he removed the bicheiro Miro Garcia and his family from there to Salgueiro.
Over the last 50 years, several criminal cases have been opened against Capitão Guimarães. In two of them, he was sentenced: in 1993, when Judge Denise Frossard convicted him of forming a gang and armed band; and in 2007, when Judge Ana Paula Vieira de Carvalho convicted him of corruption of a public agent in Operation Furacão. In both cases, he didn’t serve his full sentence. Guimarães made legal maneuvers to avoid the cases becoming final and, consequently, the sentences not being carried out.
But, in December 2022, the bicheiro had house arrest decreed by the 4th Criminal Court of São Gonçalo. He is suspected of being the mastermind of a murder, which took place in July 2020, in the municipality of São Gonçalo, in the Metropolitan Region.