The indictment of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for a series of "intentional" crimes during the Covid-19 pandemic will be required on Wednesday, October 20. 

After nearly six months of eventful hearings with several ministers, senior officials, hospital leaders and families of Covid-19 victims, the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (ICC) of the Brazilian Senate - made up of senators from various political trends - makes a long-awaited report.

The approximately 1,200-page document must be read - probably in an abridged version - by the investigating senator, Renan Calheiros.

This one announced Tuesday evening to have retained nine counts of indictment against Jair Bolsonaro, of which "crime against humanity" and "prevarication".

Those of "homicide" and "genocide of indigenous populations" were withdrawn at the last minute due to dissensions within the ICC.

For the ICC, the crimes cited in the report are "intentional", the Bolsonaro government having deliberately decided not to take the necessary measures to contain the circulation of the virus.

Political impact

The ICC is also expected to seek indictment of several ministers and the president's three eldest sons, who called the commission a "farce".

He dismissed the investigation as politically motivated. 

"This report will look like a sentence, but the government is calm. We can criticize the president's attitude, but not incriminate him," Uol Fernando Bezerra, head of the government parliamentary bloc in the Senate, told the site.

The ICC does not have the power to initiate legal proceedings itself, but its revelations could have considerable political impact, as polls already show Jair Bolsonaro losing to left-wing ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva one year away from the presidential election.

The report will still be sent to the Public Prosecutor's Office, which has sole jurisdiction to indict those incriminated by the ICC.

In the case of Jair Bolsonaro, specialists consider this indictment unlikely, since it is the responsibility of the Attorney General Augusto Aras, an ally of Jair Bolsonaro.

The far-right president also benefits from support in Parliament able to prevent him from opening an impeachment procedure.

The vote in the Senate is expected to take place next week.

Many errors identified

For its report, the ICC investigated the government's responsibilities in the serious oxygen shortage that caused the death of dozens of patients by asphyxiation in Manaus (north), Jair Bolsonaro's anti-confinement speech and his denial of gravity of Covid-19, a "flu" that has killed more than 600,000 people in Brazil.

The government is also pinned for delays and suspicions of corruption in the procurement of vaccines.

Thus, Jair Bolsonaro would have deliberately refused the first offers to purchase vaccines, thus delaying the deployment of the vaccination campaign in Brazil.

The report estimates that 95,000 people have lost their lives as a result of this decision.

The Commission also looked into the relationship between Brasilia and private health mutuals accused of promoting "early treatment", in particular with hydroxychloroquine, the ineffectiveness of which has been scientifically proven.

One of them, Prevent Senior, is suspected of having carried out experiments with this type of treatment without the knowledge of her patients, and of having pressured her doctors to prescribe them to "human guinea pigs".

"The ICC report is clearly intended to result in the punishment of those responsible, and there are many. We cannot afford not to punish them," Omar Aziz, president of the Commission, summed up Tuesday.

With AFP and Reuters

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