The former Bolsonarist Minister of Justice, Anderson Torres, was arrested on Saturday and former President Jair Bolsonaro is himself directly targeted for his role in the ransacking of national institutions in Brasília.
Anderson Torres, who was Brasília’s security secretary at the time of the January 8 violence, was arrested on Saturday upon arriving at Brasília airport as part of the investigation into the rampage, local media reported.
Suspected of connivance with the rioters accused of having fomented a ” remake of the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Mr. Torres, who claims his innocence, was arrested as he was returning by plane from the United States to appear in court.
The arrest comes the day after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes announced the inclusion, as requested by the General Prosecutor’s Office, of former far-right head of state Jair Bolsonaro in his investigation aimed at discover the possible instigators of this violence.
Mr. Bolsonaro, narrowly beaten by the left-wing candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for the October presidential election, “made a public incitement to the execution of a crime” by broadcasting on social networks a video “highlighting causes the regularity of the presidential election of 2022”, explained the prosecution in a press release.
This video was published two days after the invasion of the headquarters of the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court by thousands of bolsonarists, then deleted, recalled the prosecution.
But it could, according to him, provide “a link of proof” justifying “a global investigation into the acts carried out before and after January 8, 2023” by Mr. Bolsonaro.
Overspending
The former president “has never had the slightest connection or participation with these movements”, affirmed his lawyers in a press release sent to Agence France-Presse, attributing the violence in Brasília to “infiltrated” elements.
Mr. Bolsonaro, who has been in the United States since the end of December, had also been pinned on Friday for excessive expenses during his mandate, such as the 29,000 Canadian dollars disbursed in one go in a modest restaurant in northern Brazil, or the 14 500 Canadian dollars in a bakery the day after her son’s wedding.
Account statements for the presidential credit card over his four years in office (2019-2022) have been published on an official website of the Lula government, which has begun to lift a secrecy imposed for 100 years by his predecessor on thousands of official documents.
Before his return on Saturday, the current Minister of Justice, Flavio Dino, had said he was considering an arrest warrant against Anderson Torres.
He is implicated after the discovery of a three-page document found at his home: he provided for the federal government to take control of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which oversees the smooth running of the ballot, “to ensure the preservation and the restoration of transparency, and approve the regularity of the electoral process for the presidential election of 2022”.
A measure considered unconstitutional by many jurists. In practice, the intention would have been to annul Lula’s election.
” Rebellion “
The presidential decree – which never saw the light of day – provided for the creation of an “electoral regulation commission” to replace the TSE, headed by a majority of members from the Ministry of Defense (8 out of 17).
The document is not dated, but the name of Jair Bolsonaro is at the end, on a space provided for his signature.
“While 33 million people suffered from hunger, they were preparing a coup,” left-wing senator Randolfe Rodrigues, leader of the Lula government’s parliamentary bloc in the upper house, tweeted on Friday.
“It shows that what we saw on January 8 was not an isolated act. [Le projet de décret] is one of the links in a putschist chain,” Flavio Dino had already declared on Thursday evening.
The Federal Police told Agence France-Presse that they could not comment on an ongoing investigation.
Mr Torres had said on Twitter on Thursday evening that the draft was “probably in a pile of documents that are supposed to be destroyed in due course”, and claimed that his disclosure was taken out of context.
The former minister had held the position of head of security for the Federal District of Brasília since January 2, but had gone on vacation shortly after.