Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, former ministers and advisors are being targeted today in a Federal Police operation regarding an attempted coup d’état, according to the police force and local media.
The Federal Police said in a statement that it is carrying out Operation Tempus Veritatis “to investigate a criminal organization that acted in the attempted coup d’état and abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law, to obtain a political advantage with the maintenance of the then President of the Republic in power”.
According to local media, police officers were already at Bolsonaro’s house, in Angra dos Reis, and ordered the delivery of the passport, having also seized the cell phone of one of his advisors, Tercio Arnaud Tomaz.
The Federal Police did not disclose the name of the targets of the operation, but local media reported that Filipe Martins, Bolsonaro’s former special advisor, and military officer Marcelo Câmara, who also worked with the former President, were the targets of warrants. prison.
Among the targets of the legal measures are also former Bolsonaro ministers, including generals Augusto Heleno, Walter Braga Netto and Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, as well as other military personnel.
In an interview with Itatiaia radio, the Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was asked about the operation and said he hoped that “the Federal Police would do things in the most democratic way possible, that there would be no abuse, that they would do what the Justice determined and then present the results of what they found to society.”
“I honestly don’t have many conditions to talk about an action by the Federal Police because this is a confidential thing, it’s a police thing, it’s a Justice thing, and it’s not up to the President of the Republic to give opinions (…). Obviously there are a lot of people involved, I think there are a lot of people who will be investigated because the concrete data is that there was an attempted coup”, he added.
According to the Brazilian police authority, 33 search and seizure warrants, four preventive arrest warrants and 48 precautionary measures other than prison are being carried out, which include the prohibition of maintaining contact with the other people being investigated, the prohibition of leaving the country, with delivery of passports within 24 hours and suspension of public duties.
Federal police comply with the measures determined by the Federal Supreme Court in the states of Amazonas, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso do Sul, Ceará, Espírito Santo, Paraná, Goiás and the Federal District.
At this stage, according to the note from the Federal Police, the investigations indicate “that the group investigated was divided into action groups to disseminate the occurrence of fraud in the 2022 presidential elections, even before the election took place, in order to enable and legitimize a military intervention, in digital militia dynamics”.
The first axis, according to the researchers, propagated the version of fraud in the 2022 elections, through the dissemination of false news about vulnerabilities in the electronic voting system, a discourse reiterated by those investigated since 2019 and which persisted even after the results of the second round of elections. elections in 2022.
The second axis of action of the alleged criminal group consisted of carrying out acts to support the abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law, through a coup d’état, with the support of military personnel with the knowledge and tactics of special forces in a politically sensitive environment.
The Brazilian Army monitors the fulfillment of some warrants, in support of the Federal Police.
The facts investigated constitute, in theory, the crimes of criminal organization, violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law and coup d’état.