(Brasilia) Brazilian authorities on Tuesday stepped up efforts to punish those responsible for the storming of official buildings in Brasilia, with arrest warrants for two former officials, including a close ally of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro.
Anderson Torres, the far-right leader’s former justice minister, faces an arrest warrant issued by a Supreme Court judge for alleged collusion with Sunday’s riots as the security secretary of the capital, a position from which he was dismissed after the events.
“We must firmly fight terrorism, these putschists who want to establish an exceptional regime,” Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said on Tuesday in Brasilia.
Judge Moraes had dismissed on Sunday the governor of the district of Brasilia, Ibaneis Rocha, who had apologized to President Lula for “the flaws” in security that allowed the looting.
Mr. Torres was in the United States on Sunday, like the ex-president who had left Brazil two days before Lula’s inauguration, refusing to give him the presidential sash.
Denying “any collusion with barbarism”, Mr. Torres declared on Twitter on Tuesday that he was going to return to Brazil in order to “present himself to justice” and take care of his defense.
Jair Bolsonaro left the Florida hospital on Tuesday where he was being treated for intestinal pain, and returned to a former martial arts specialist who hosts him south of Orlando, an AFP photographer noted.
Brazilian police also freed nearly 600 people arrested during the assault on official buildings in Brasilia on Tuesday, and are preparing to launch legal proceedings against those who organized and financed the insurrection which sowed chaos in the capital.
Of the roughly 1,500 Bolsonaro supporters arrested after Sunday’s incidents, 527 suspects have been jailed, authorities said.
These bolsonarists refuse to recognize the election of left-wing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, sworn in on 1er January.
On Tuesday, individuals who had been confined to a gymnasium at the National Federal Police Academy were brought by coach to a bus station from where they were able to return home, AFP journalists noted.
In one of the buses, the passengers shouted “Victory is ours!” »
Some have stretched their arms outside the windows, clenching their fists or making the V for victory.
“Humiliating”
The Federal Police announced in a press release that 599 people had been released “for humanitarian reasons”, in particular because of their age, their state of health or because they were accompanied by young children.
Not all coaches coming out of the police academy went to the bus station. Some have taken people arrested to a police station, so that they are then transferred to the Papuda prison complex.
“The Federal Police Training School has been turned into a Nazi concentration camp. It’s humiliating to see how good people like us have been treated,” said one of the freed Bolsonarians, Agostinho Ribeiro, who attributes the depredations to “infiltrated” left-wing activists.
A woman who wished to remain anonymous gave a completely different version. “Everyone was treated well. No one died,” she said.
The Federal Police has denied the information that an elderly person arrested died Monday in his academy.
The invasion of the Presidential Palace, Congress and the Supreme Court in Brasilia, reminiscent of the assault on the Capitol in Washington two years ago, caused considerable material damage.
stand firm
“Brazilian democracy stands firm,” tweeted Lula on Tuesday, who considers what happened in the capital to be “terrorist acts.” “We will take the country out of hatred and disunity,” he wrote in another message.
Earlier on Tuesday, Justice Minister Flavio Dino said around 50 new arrest warrants would be issued soon.
“Some will target people who took part in the ransacking of places of power and were not arrested in flagrante delicto. Others will target people who were not in Brasilia […]but are suspected of being involved in the organization or financing” of the riots, explained the minister during an interview with the Globonews channel.
Influencers have created an account on Instagram allowing Internet users to report users who posted selfies during the riots. This account was followed by more than a million subscribers by the end of the day on Tuesday.
The President of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, for his part showed himself in favor of the opening of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry to shed full light on “violations of the rule of law” represented by the riots. in Brasília.