From Brasilia
It was twelve fateful hours for Jair Bolsonaro. This Saturday shortly after seven in the morning he was arrested Anderson Torres, one of his trusted men and someone who must know compromising secrets. Twelve hours before the prison, at nineteen hours on Friday, The Attorney General’s Office requested the Federal Supreme Court, and it accepted, to investigate the ex-president of the extreme right for being the alleged instigator of the failed coup against the president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva perpetrated last Sunday.
the commissioner
Commissioner Anderson Torres, with a sharp look, was arrested on Saturday at the Juscelino Kubitscheck International Airport, in Brasilia, shortly after arriving from Florida, United States. Immediately afterwards, he was transferred in Federal Police vehicles to a unit where he was interrogated. Lula’s Justice Minister, Flavio Dino, one of the important cabinet officials, was informed of the police proceedings.
In his capacity as Secretary of Public Security of Brasilia, Torres dismantled the leadership of the Military Police, separating from their positions the officers specialized in large public events, days before the coup deluge that occurred on Sunday.
The looting of the offices of the Presidency and the Legislative and Judicial branches was carried out before the eyes, and sometimes with the help, of the few agents stationed in the place. Last Thursday when making the first extensive balance of the facts, Lula accused the Torres police and the Armed Forces of “collusion” with the “coup” and ordered Minister Dino. go fully into the investigation so that the plot does not go unpunished.
In addition to being responsible for the ineffectiveness of the police, Torres sent a small number of troops to protect the most important properties of the Republic, another aggravation that contributed to the request for his arrest. In the framework of the process opened by the Supreme Court, Torres will surely be questioned about why he left Brasilia and traveled to the United Stateswhere he would have met with Bolsonaro, shortly before the far-right outbreak.
From the ruling party, Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, described the commissioner’s trip to the United States as “very suspicious” and considered it plausible that he was informed in advance of the outbreak on Sunday. The uprising was coordinated through coded messages through the Bolsonaro social networks, to which both Torres and Bolsonaro and their high command surely had access.. . . . Three of the former ruler’s sons participate in this reduced table of power: Senator Flavio, Deputy Eduardo and Councilor Carlos.
Bolsonaro instigator
Judge Alexandre de Moraes, of the Supreme Court, analyzes sending an interrogation to Jair Bolsonaro, on vacation in Orlando, Florida, after including him as an investigated in the process on the looting on Sunday. In its foundations, the nucleus of prosecutors specialized in “anti-democratic acts”, which prepared the complaint, maintains that the ex-president was the “instigator” of the uprising.
The aforementioned incitement, the prosecutors continue, is related to the policy that Bolsonaro implemented in his four years in government to “undermine” “trust” in democratic institutions. Either by questioning the credibility of the electronic ballot boxes with which the elections defeated by Lula in October were held, or by urging an uprising against the Federal Supreme Court.
In that sense The prosecutors’ presentation cites a recent post by Bolsonaro in which he again questioned Lula’s victory and sow the ghost of fraud, a thesis defended by its most radical followers.
three milestones
Since his years as a federal deputy Bolsonaro never stopped demanding the dictatorship military (1964-1985), a habit that he would continue to cultivate during his presidential term (2019-2022).
As president, he attacked the institutions on a daily basis, indoctrinating his millions of followers with well-choreographed speeches and appearances. He spoke out against democracy on the beach, in evangelical churches and at events after leading caravans with hundreds of motorcyclists across the country. To the use of motorbike parades carried out in the thirties of the last century in Italy by Benito Mussolini: the Duce whose bombastic gesticulation sometimes reappears in the expressions of this former captain of the Brazilian Army.
If you have to choose the apotheotic moments of that policy with which Bolsonaro harassed democracy, the first of them happened on September 7, 2021, Independence Day, when hundreds of thousands of people wearing yellow national team jerseys gathered in two events: in the morning in Brasilia and then in São Paulo. There the then president murdered the Federal Supreme Court and insulted several judges, especially Alexandre de Moraes. In those days of September there was a test attack on the Supreme Court (finally materialized on Sunday), by a caravan of trucks next to which was Eduardo Bolsonaro.
On September 7, 2022, Bolsonaro led two other huge rallies. The first in the morning in Brasilia, where there was a parade where the military support for his re-election was demonstrated. And later in Rio de Janeiro. The two rallies had a fascist and coup character. The other milestone of this increase occurred on Sunday, January 8, which could be called “8 E.”
THE “8E”
This third moment was the most violent attack against the Presidency, Congress and the Court in memory in Brasilia, by thousands of Bolsonaristas, a good part of them coming from a camp set up next to the Army Headquarters.
Neither Bolsonaro nor Commissioner Torres were in the Federal Capital, despite which prosecutors and ministers are certain that they were key in this attempt to overthrow the government that began on January 1.
a link
In the midst of the reconstruction of the Planalto Palace and the arrest of more than a thousand extremists camped next to the Army, on Tuesday The Federal Police discovered in Torres’s residence a draft, written by hand, on a project for Bolsoanro to declare the “state of Defense”, through which the electoral Justice would intervene and declare the nullity of the elections in which Lula was elected.
For Justice Minister Dino, this document is just one “link” in the chain of coup initiatives concocted by Bolsonarismo until a few days before the end of the government, on December 31.
According to the official That three-page report made the situation of Commissioner Torres very complicated and it can trigger a sentence against Bolsonaro, whose imprisonment is not ruled out when he returns from the United States, where he will have to renew his visa since he entered on December 30 as president, a mandate that he no longer holds.
Biden y Trump
All kinds of information about the former president comes from the United States. Some speculate that he will remain in that country to flee from the Brazilian Justice, others speak of his settlement in Italy where he could apply for citizenship. Y It is not ruled out that he will disembark in Brasilia shortly to prevent part of his electorate from starting to distance himself, as well as leaders of his group, the Liberal Party.
It also transpired that he could visit his ally Donald Trump, in Florida, where they already met when both were presidents. Every movement of the ex-military South American is monitored by the FBI and representatives of the Democratic Party concerned about the attempted coup of 8 E and eventual aftershocks that could occur in the coming months.
That group of Democratic legislators made it known to their co-religionist, the president Joe Bidenwhat it would not be bad to expel Bolsonaro for considering him a “dangerous” character that he would be using US territory as the headquarters of his conspiracies.
European diplomats established in Brasilia agree with the concern of the Democratic deputies about the adventures of Bolsonaro and his entourage, where Torres was until Friday night when he embarked for Brasilia for his subsequent arrest. According to these diplomats from the United States, various initiatives of the extreme right with global impact have been articulated – among which is the Brazilian uprising – under the guidance of Steve Bannon and other former Trump advisers.
Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro is the liaison with Bannon and Jason Miller – right-wing publicist and creator of the red social Getrr – with whom you met recently. In those meetings, the former president’s son was advised to radicalize the attacks against Lula, first ignoring her victory and then encouraging direct action modeled after the assault on the Capitol in 2021. By the way, that was what happened on 8 E.