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Cecilia Haddad murder: ex-boyfriend tells court trip to Brazil planned in advance Cecilia Haddad murder: ex-boyfriend tells court that trip to Brazil planned in advance
(about 2 hours later)
The man accused of murdering the Brazilian Cecilia Haddad in Sydney has said his trip to Rio de Janeiro about the same time her body was found was planned in advance. Mario Marcelo Santoro, the man accused of murdering his Brazilian ex-girlfriend Cecilia Haddad in Sydney, spoke for the first time during a court hearing in Rio de Janeiro on Monday and told the court his trip back home to Brazil on the weekend of her death had been planned in advance.
Haddad’s former boyfriend Mario Marcelo Ferreira dos Santos Santoro, 40, appeared in court in Rio on Monday. But under direction from his lawyers, Santoro, 40, only answered questions from the defence, did not address the issue of his innocence or guilt, and declined to answer questions from the judge or prosecutors.
Santoro did not answer questions put to him by prosecutors and the judge, but did answer questions from his defence lawyers. The Brazilian mining executive Cecilia Haddad, 38, was killed in April and her body was dumped in Sydney’s Lane Cove River.
He stands accused of killing Haddad, 38, in Sydney in April and disposing of her body in the Lane Cove River. He flew to Rio the weekend her body was discovered. Haddad and Santoro both studied at Rio’s private Pontifical Catholic University and he said they had briefly dated then before beginning a relationship years later in Australia. Santoro had been living with Haddad in Sydney when she was murdered but flew to Rio the weekend as her body was found. He was arrested in July and charged with femicide after allegedly choking Haddad to death.
As Brazil does not extradite its citizens he is being tried in Rio. He appeared in court at a pretrial hearing September but this was the first time he had spoken.
Cecilia Haddad murder: former Brazilian boyfriend confessed to killing, court hearsCecilia Haddad murder: former Brazilian boyfriend confessed to killing, court hears
Santoro told the court on Monday his trip had been planned to see his parents and children but, owing to his father requiring surgery, he had returned to Brazil sooner than planned. Reporters were only allowed to access the court after Santoro had begun talking. Speaking softly, handcuffed and wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, he contradicted Haddad’s ex-husband, Felipe Torres, who according to his lawyers had said in court he did not know the couple were together. “I said we were living together,” Santoro said. “He didn’t want to know, they were in the process of a divorce.”
Asked by his defence lawyers why he did not have a return ticket to Australia, Santoro said his flight had been booked to Chile and from there he had planned to take his children and his mother to meet Haddad. They had planned to go skiing before returning to Australia, he said. Asked why Haddad had slept away from her apartment where Santoro was also living during the week, he said it was because she had a job 100km away and slept away two to three nights a week.
At a previous hearing, the court heard that Rio police claimed Santoro had made an “informal confession” to killing Haddad and disposing of her body. In the September pretrial hearing, her father, José Haddad, stepmother, Andrea Haddad, and brother, João Haddad, said she had been a happy, hard-working young woman who had entered an abusive relationship with Santoro, suffered “psychological violence” and was scared of his obsessive, controlling behaviour.
At Monday’s hearing journalists were not allowed into the court by court staff until the final 15 minutes of the 90-minute hearing. In October, according to SBS and a court release, Rita Maciel, a friend of Haddad’s in Sydney, told the court via video conference that Santoro could not accept the end of their relationship and that Haddad had lived in fear. Her mother, Milu Mueller, said she had been taking to her daughter on the phone when she heard a man’s voice she recognised as Santoro’s demanding she open the door. She had been unable to contact her daughter after that.
Santoro’s lawyers later spoke about the case, saying the so-called informal confession had not been recorded by police. “Every interview he gave was filmed and recorded,” said Anderson Rollemberg, one of his legal team. Santoro’s lawyers said evidence produced by Australian police and delivered to their Brazilian counterparts and prosecutors in Rio in November had not yet been attached to court documents and they had advised their client not to answer questions from judge or prosecution.
“And now the authorities say that suspect gave a spontaneous statement. Why did they not film nor record it? … In my view this defence is not permissible in court.” “We asked Marcelo to remain silent, to exercise the right to not make any declaration in the sense of responding to any questions by the judge or the accusation,” Mauricio Mayr, one of his three-man defence team told reporters. “There is nothing new in terms of documental evidence.”
Santoro told the court how he met Haddad while they were studying at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. Asked by his lawyer why he had flown back to Brazil the weekend Haddad’s body was found, Santoro said his father was sick with a heart condition and that he had arranged a holiday with relatives, himself and Haddad in Chile. From there, he and Haddad had planned to fly back to Australia, he said.
He had been dating Haddad for a year when she ended their relationship. They lived together in her apartment in Ryde. Mayr said his defence team had challenged the competence of the Rio de Janeiro state court to hear the case, arguing that it should come under federal justice. That would invalidate Santoro’s “preventative prison” order that kept him in custody and could even mean he might sit out the rest of the lengthy court and appeals process at liberty, he said.
At a prior hearing, a friend of Haddad told the court how she spent the days before her death in a “panic” over alleged threats and harassment by Santoro. “All the requests that are being made by Australia are going via the Foreign Ministry, and that’s why the defence believes that the competent judge would be federal,” Mayr said. “He would wait out the judgment of this process at liberty.”
Rita Maciel, a 37-year-old Brazilian who lives in Sydney, said her friend had “a fear of being at home, a fear of going to work, a fear of driving her own car”. The defence team also challenged the legality of an informal confession Santoro made to a police officer while in custody, outlined to the court in September by Fabio Cardoso, the head of the Rio homicide squad. Santoro did not repeat the confession in front of lawyers.
Haddad’s mother had also told of her daughter’s fear and of a final phone call, when she said she could hear Santoro banging on the door. “There is no confirmation that it could have happened,” Mayr said.
The hearing will resume next year when the judge will decide whether the case will go to a full jury trial. Fabio Cardoso told the Guardian he defended the confession but admitted: “There is no recording, no confession signed by him.”
He said his squad’s research had shown that the case was in the right court of justice. “The state court has the competence to try this case,” he said.
Australian police officers had travelled to Rio last month and handed over their evidence, he said, following up with an email summarising evidence sent to the Rio state prosecutor.
The case will now continue next year when a judge will decide if it will proceed to a jury trial, according to Santoro’s lawyers. Rio state prosecutors did not immediately respond to questions.
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