The decision of the Senate Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil (ICC) should strike the image of the Brazilian head of state.

The ICC approved, late Tuesday, October 26, the damning report of its six months of investigation, which recommends the indictment of President Jair Bolsonaro for ten crimes, including "crimes against humanity".

After dozens of hearings, often poignant, the ICC accused the government of having "deliberately exposed" Brazilians to "mass contamination".

Seven of the eleven senators who carried out the work of the ICC approved the text which also calls for the indictment of 77 other people, including several ministers, ex-ministers, companies, and the three eldest sons of Jair Bolsonaro, all elected officials.

At the end of the vote, the senators observed a minute of silence in tribute to the more than 606,000 Brazilians who died of Covid-19.

"Intentional crimes"

For the ICC, these crimes are "intentional", the government having deliberately decided not to take the necessary measures against the coronavirus, hoping that the population achieves "collective immunity", a strategy "at high risk".

The ICC in particular denounced the "deliberate delay" in the acquisition of vaccines, the government having preferred to promote ineffective treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, with "tragic consequences" for the population.

The ICC also investigated government responsibilities in the oxygen shortage that killed dozens of patients in Manaus (north), and the relationship between Brasilia and private health mutuals.

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

A symbolic scope

As the ICC cannot go further, its report will be sent to the prosecution, which has sole jurisdiction to indict the people it has incriminated.

But in the case of Jair Bolsonaro, specialists deem an indictment unlikely, since it is the responsibility of the Attorney General, Augusto Aras, an ally of the president.

However, the "crime against humanity" could be tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The charges of the ICC should have a mostly symbolic scope for the time being, Jair Bolsonaro also benefiting from support in Parliament able to prevent him from being dismissed.

For the families of the victims, the evidence provided by this report, which overwhelms the Brazilian government's action, may serve as the basis for private legal proceedings.

According to the French-speaking correspondent of France 24 in Rio de Janeiro, Pierre Le Duff, the text offers compensation for the relatives of the more than 600,000 victims of the Covid-19.

A controversial video

Earlier, the eleven senators of the ICC had asked the Supreme Court and the prosecution to suspend the president's Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts "until further notice", after he associated the vaccine against the Covid-19 AIDS, in a video posted last week on social media.

The political scientist Mauricio Santoro said to AFP, "skeptical" about such a possibility.

"If we take the example of (former US President Donald) Trump, something very serious, like the invasion of the Capitol," would have to be done for Jair Bolsonaro to be excluded from Twitter and Facebook, he said. he says.

The ICC also demanded that Jair Bolsonaro "retract on a national (television) channel concerning the correlation between anti-Covid vaccine and AIDS contamination", under penalty of a fine of 50,000 reais (7,700 euros).

"We can no longer tolerate this type of behavior", wrote the senators, also calling for the blocking of the president's access to his accounts in order to "avoid the destruction of evidence".

On Monday, the YouTube video platform suspended the activities of the president's channel for a week, after removing the video, as did Facebook and Instagram.

With AFP

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