Brazilian police official fighting paramilitaries in Rio found dead

Rio de Janeiro, Oct 23 (EFE).- A Brazilian police official who stood out for her fight against "militias," as the paramilitary groups that battle drug trafficking in Rio de Janeiro are known, was found dead in her home on Thursday, an apparent murder victim, authorities said.

The body of Tatiene Damaris Furtado - the deputy commander of the 36th precinct of the state police - was found at her home in western Rio de Janeiro with bruises on different parts of her body with without any bullet or knife wounds, police said.

The investigation was taken over by the police Homicide Division and the case is being treated as a murder given that there were signs the victim put up a struggle with her attacker. Authorities said their calculations were that the killing took place about 12.30 p.m.

Furtado had become a firm rival of the illegal militia organizations made up of police and former police who expelled drug traffickers from some of Rio's shantytowns, or "favelas," but who then imposed on the neighborhoods regimes similar to those of the drug traffickers.

The militias collect "taxes" for providing protection and services such as transportation and cooking/heating gas in the favelas they control, most of them located in western Rio, where Furtado lived.

Police are focusing their investigation on the possibility that Furtado's murder was a revenge killing by the militias or even a crime of passion, and the woman's husband was one of the first to be interviewed, but authorities have not said whether he was at home at the time of the crime.

Furtado joined the Civil Police in 2005 as a fingerprint identification specialist and three years later was promoted to deputy commander.

She told friends recently that she had been threatened by militia members.