The Brazilian government was tightening its grip on Thursday around participants, organizers and financiers of Sunday’s riots in Brasília, which prompted Lula to “deeply reorganize” his security at the presidential palace.
“I am convinced that the door of the Planalto palace has been opened for people to enter, because no door has been broken,” the left-wing leader said during his first breakfast with journalists since his inauguration. from 1er January.
“It means that someone facilitated their entry here,” stressed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “How could I have someone at my office door who could shoot me?” he asked.
More than 4,000 supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, who reject his electoral defeat suffered by Lula in late October, wreaked havoc in the capital on Sunday, invading and ransacking the presidential palace, the Supreme Court and Congress. .
Some 2,000 people were arrested, and more than 1,100 were imprisoned after being questioned, according to the latest report from the authorities.
And the noose continues to tighten, with many rioters identified through surveillance cameras, press footage or selfies they posted on social media.
But the priority of the authorities is now to sanction the networks that worked behind the scenes to finance and organize the insurrection.
On Thursday, the Office of the Advocate General of the Union, which defends the interests of the federal state, asked the justice of Brasília to freeze 6.5 million reais (about 1.7 million Canadian dollars) of 52 people and seven companies accused of financing the transport of rioters in about 100 coaches which arrived from all over the country on Saturday evening.
According to several Brazilian media, a large number of alleged financiers are linked to the agribusiness sector, loyal support of Jair Bolsonaro.
Current damage assessment
The assessment of the considerable damage suffered by the national heritage, including works of art, was still in progress. For the two chambers of Congress alone, they amount to more than one million Canadian dollars, according to the first estimates made public by the government.
Thursday, Lula multiplied the meetings with his ministers, in an apparent concern to return to normality after the shock of this attack against Brazilian democracy unprecedented since the establishment of the military dictatorship (1964-1985).
On Wednesday evening, he participated in the enthronement of Anielle Franco, Minister for Racial Equality, and Sônia Guajajara, appointed head of the newly created Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. A highly symbolic ceremony, in one of the large lounges of the presidential palace of Planalto, which had been invaded by hordes of Bolsonarists three days earlier.
At the same time, the security forces in the capital were put on high alert, after calls in all major cities in Brazil for “mega-demonstrations” to “take back power”, which finally made pschitt.
In the bruised capital, where dozens of police, riot trucks and a helicopter had been deployed, no protester answered the call. The same observation was made in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo by AFP journalists.
Calls for eviction
In the United States, elected Democrats have called for President Joe Biden to revoke the visa of the former Brazilian president, who is in Florida, refusing that the United States serve as a refuge for the former leader.
“We must not allow Mr. Bolsonaro or any other former Brazilian official to find refuge in the United States in order to escape justice for any possible crime committed during his mandate”, write these 41 elected officials in an open letter addressed to President Biden and made public on Thursday.
They also call on the US government to “cooperate fully with any investigation by the Brazilian government” and to verify the legal status in the United States of the former president, who arrived on American territory as head of state.
His stay in Florida puts the United States in a relatively awkward light, particularly in regard to previous hosts of controversial Latin American leaders.
Asked on Wednesday, the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, said that the United States had not received any request from Brazil about Jair Bolsonaro, but that it would process such a request “quickly”.