David Miranda, a Brazilian politician, has died following a nine-month battle in intensive care according to a tweet on Tuesday from his husband, journalist Glenn Greenwald. David was 37 years old. Miranda was elected as one of the first openly gay city councilors in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and went on to serve in Brazil’s congress in 2019. Miranda withdrew his candidacy for reelection in September 2022 after six weeks in the ICU suffering from a gastrointestinal infection. His death led to an outpouring of tributes online. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called Miranda “a young man with an extraordinary trajectory who left too soon,” on Twitter.
Greenwald has been at the forefront of high-profile reports for exposing secrets in US intelligence programs. With the cooperation of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Greenwald broke the story of the existence of a US National Security Agency program that is thought to have collected large amounts of phone and Internet data.
In 2013, Miranda was detained and interrogated at London’s Heathrow Airport for nine hours by British security forces under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 as he was flying back to Rio from Berlin.
According to a profile from TIME magazine, Miranda met Greenwald in 2005 when he was playing volleyball on Ipanema Beach and accidentally knocked over an American tourist’s drink. That tourist was attorney Glenn Greenwald.
