Sebastian Fest

Updated Thursday, February 8, 2024-14:53

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  • Crisis The coup plan in Brazil so that Lula does not assume power: "The Armed Forces as a moderating power"

The Brazilian Federal Police broke into the summer home of former President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday morning, accused of leading an attempted coup d'état to remain in power after losing the

2022 elections

.


"I left the government more than a year ago and I continue to suffer

relentless persecution

," Bolsonaro told

Folha de Sao Paulo

.


The Federal Police showed up at the summer home in Angra dos Reis, in the State of Rio de Janeiro, and seized the mobile phone of

Tercio Arnaud Thomaz

, one of the advisors of the conservative Bolsonaro, who was in the residence with the former president.

The security forces demanded that Bolsonaro hand over his

passport

, but the former president claimed that he did not have it with him and was given 24 hours to comply with the order.

Bolsonaro, 68 years old and president between 2019 and 2023, is prohibited from communicating with other people who are also the subject of operation

Tempus Veritatis

, which investigates the attempted coup d'état in 2022. The objective was to keep Bolsonaro in power despite his defeat against

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

in the second round of the presidential elections.

The investigation is based especially on the revelations of Colonel

Mauro Cid

, who was Bolsonaro's assistant during his presidency. Cid pointed to two names, former advisor

Filipe Martins

and admiral

Almir Garnier dos Santos

.

The colonel's revelations dismantled the version that there were nothing more than delirious dreams of some ultra-conservatives. According to Cid, Martins brought the president the draft of a decree to keep Bolsonaro in power, call new elections and

arrest opponents

.



Aware of the operation against his predecessor, Lula celebrated the event during a radio interview: "The concrete fact is that there was an attempted coup. There was an attempt to destroy something that we built so many years ago, which is the democratic process. These people have to be investigated."


A week after assuming power, Lula suffered the invasion of the Plaza de los Tres Poderes, on January 8, 2023, which is in the black history of Brazil.


This week, Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) sentenced 29 people to prison for the coup attack.


The sentences are added to others known in September and which affected 30 people. After agreeing on a virtual level that the accused should be sentenced, the STF magistrates still had to establish the level of the sentences, which range from 11 to 17 years.

In 2023, the STF sentenced another 30 people to sentences of between three and 17 years in prison. The accusations are for five crimes: violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, coup d'état, armed criminal association, aggravated damage and damage to protected heritage.


The 59 people who have already passed through the STF are from the category known as "the executors", people who were arrested at the same moment in which they invaded and destroyed the facilities of the Planalto Palace, the Congress and the STF itself. .


The political plot behind the invasion of the three powers, inspired by that suffered by the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, is convoluted and there are still no condemnations of the ideologues, nor of the financiers of the coup coven.


De Moraes explained in January to "O Globo" how the astonishing January 8 was reached. The judge recalled the tens of thousands of people camping outside military barracks across Brazil and shouting "Armed Forces, save the Nation!"


"It was a big mistake on the part of the authorities to allow those people to remain in front of the (Brasília) barracks for the last year. The big mistake was allowing the coup plotters to enter the Esplanade of the Ministries. January 8 was the culmination of the movement: the last attempt to annul the legitimate result of the polls".


De Moraes goes into detail about the plan that had to be developed if January 8 was successful. "They said that they should come to Brasilia. From several financiers, the order was that they should come, invade Congress and stay (...). They would try to convince the Army to join the coup. It is not that the Army was going to join , because at no time did the institution flirt with the idea, although some of its members were involved, and all are being investigated."


That January 8, De Moraes was in Paris with his family, but the most exalted in Brasilia wanted to hang him in the Plaza de los Tres Poderes itself.


"What did they want?" Miriam Leitao, one of the country's most influential columnists, asked last month. "They wanted to cause a domino effect, in which similar acts would occur in other states."


The dismissal of the governor of the Federal District of Brasilia, Ibaneis Rocha, who did not lift a finger for the Military Police of Brasilia to contain the protesters, was key to preventing other governors from being tempted to join the rebellion.


At the close of that turbulent 2023, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva achieved something controversial. that his personal lawyer and his Minister of Justice became members of the STF.


The investigation that today determined that Bolsonaro's passport was taken away points to different facts, Bolsonaro's constant allusions to the fact that the electronic voting system promoted fraud, as a basis for the attempt to remain in power beyond the result of the elections. elections. That attempt and what happened on January 8 in Brasilia are, however, clearly connected.