Brazilian police on Thursday sought the prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro over a 2022 “coup” plot to prevent current leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office.
A police statement said its investigators had concluded that Bolsonaro and 36 others had planned to “violently overthrow the democratic state.”
“Federal police on Thursday completed an investigation into the existence of a criminal organization that acted in a coordinated manner in 2002 in an effort to keep the then-president in power,” the statement said.
“The final report has been sent to the Supreme Court with the request that 37 individuals be indicted for the crimes of violent overthrow of a democratic state, coup d’état and criminal organization,” it said.
It is up to the Attorney General of Brazil to decide whether the allegations are sufficiently substantiated to bring criminal charges. The charge of attempting a coup carries a prison sentence of up to 12 years.
Bolsonaro vowed to “fight” the charge and accused the Supreme Court judge overseeing the case of violating the law.
“The fight begins in the Attorney General’s office,” Bolsonaro said on his X social media account.
Bolsonaro said, “The judge, Alexandre de Moraes, leads the entire investigation, adjusting statements, making arrests without charges, looking for evidence and he has a very creative advisory team. He Do everything the law doesn’t say.”
According to police, the alleged plot was hatched in the final months of Bolsonaro’s 2019-2022 presidency.
Leftist Lula, who was previously president between 2003 and 2010, won the October 2022 election to replace far-right Bolsonaro.
The police statement made no direct connection between the alleged plot and the uprising in Brasília on January 8, 2023, when thousands of Bolsonaro supporters broke into the capital’s presidential palace, Congress building and the Supreme Court.
The investigation continues into the turmoil that echoed scenes in the United States two years ago, when supporters of Donald Trump protesting President Joe Biden’s election victory attacked the US Capitol in Washington, January 6, 2021 Had done.
Bolsonaro has previously expressed admiration for Trump.
The list of alleged co-conspirators in the Bolsonaro case included the names of three elite soldiers and a police officer, who were arrested on Tuesday on charges of plotting to assassinate Lula and Moraes in a separately announced case.
trump parallels
Bolsonaro has been the target of many investigations, but Thursday’s finding of him at the center of an alleged coup is the most dramatic.
He says he is innocent and a victim of “harassment”.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has already been disqualified from holding public office until 2030 after making baseless claims of fraud in Brazil’s electronic voting system.
He is banned from leaving the country while a massive investigation called “Tempus Veritatis” (“time of truth” in Latin) continues. Many close associates of Bolsonaro have already been arrested in the investigation.
Bolsonaro hopes to overturn the disqualification decision and attempt a comeback in the 2026 presidential elections.
On X, he has posted parallels between his position and that of Trump, who won over US voters to ensure a return to the White House this month.
The police investigation led to calls for Bolsonaro to be indicted, detailing an alleged order that said the former president ordered high-ranking military officers to arrest Moraes in December 2022.
Moraes was head of the national electoral tribunal that validated Lula’s victory in 2022.
That decree was confirmed by military authorities in a police interrogation, according to transcripts made public by Moraes, who is now in charge of the case at the Supreme Court.
Marco Antonio Freire Gomes, a retired Brazilian army general, spoke to police investigators about meetings he held with Bolsonaro in December 2022, according to a transcript released in March.
He said an aide to Bolsonaro had seen the legal opinion the then-president had prepared in support of his bid to stay in power.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
