The operationAnti Coup”which broke out on Tuesday morning in Brazil while the last day of the G20had a strong impact on the country. The federal police, let us remember, arrested an army general, three soldiers and a federal police officer between Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia. They are accused of have prepared a planfrom November 2022, for assassinate President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his deputy Geraldo Alckmin on December 15, 2022that is, before his inauguration on January 1, 2023. The detained general is Mario Fernandesformer executive secretary of the Presidency of the Republic in the Bolsonaro government.
The Federal Police has already announced that This week the investigation will conclude about the looting of institutional buildings in Brasilia January 8, 2023. According to the news site G1it is expected that the final report accuses several people for crimes such as attempted coup d’état, violent abolition of the democratic rule of law and criminal organization, but it is most likely that he will not ask for the preventive detention of suspects. The judicial siege on Bolsonaro is also tightened by annihilating any possibility of amnesty for him and the others under investigation.
The STF judge himself, Gilmar Mendeshe reiterated it on Tuesday. “The hypothesis of an amnesty is unthinkable“, said. Besides, Mauro Cid will be heard again today for the second time in a week. Bolsonaro’s former right-hand man had denied on Tuesday to the Federal Police that he was aware of the plan to kill Lula. But Judge Moraes now wants to question him at the headquarters of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in Brasilia to clarify “the contradictions between his statements and the investigations carried out by the Federal Police.”
Meanwhile, new details have emerged about Tuesday’s operation. According to the newspaper The State of São Paulothe soldiers mentioned in the investigation are many more than the five detainees. It would be about a network of 35 high-ranking members of the Armed Forcesamong them ten generals and an admiral, who exchanged information about the coup or how to “pacify” the country after the coup. As for the soldiers who participated in the plan to kill Lula, they belonged to the body of the so-called ‘black kids‘, the Army special forces, which denied the news that those arrested were also part of the security of the G20 in Rio de Janeiro. The ‘kids pretos’ were created in 1956 and today there are about 2,500 soldiers. It is a body trained to carry out missions with a high degree of risk and secrecy, such as irregular warfare operations, guerrilla warfare and insurgency. Its members are also trained for sabotage situations, intelligence operations, escape and escape planning.
The group of detainees also planned to kill the minister of the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF), Alexandre de Moraes. A document seized during the operation and titled ““green-yellow dagger” reveals that weapons and bombs would be used for the attacks, and even poison would be administered during a public event. The Federal Police report mentions the “terrorist characteristics” of the document, which describes “all the data necessary to carry out a high-risk operation.” The plan is rich in detailswith indications of what would be needed for its execution, and also describes the possibility of several deaths. There are, for example, references to the arsenal that would be used in the operation, including civilian weapons commonly used by police and military, but also heavier weapons of war, such as machine guns and grenade launchers. The investigation indicates that, in the document, the code name “Jeca” refers to Lula. For the president’s execution, the document describes, taking into account his health vulnerability and his frequent visits to hospitals, “the possibility of resorting to poisoning or the use of chemicals to cause organic collapse.” “Joca” was, however, the code name of Vice President Alckmin. Judge Moraes, on the other hand, was called “the professor.”.
According to Brazilian police, in their encrypted Signal chat group, titled “World Cup 2022″, the soldiers had put themselves nicknames from countries like Austria, Germany and even Ghana. The idea was to create, once the assassinations of Lula and the other two targets had been carried out, a crisis cabinet led by generals Augusto Heleno, then head of the Institutional Security Cabinet, and Walter Braga Netto, former Minister of Defense and Civil House during the Bolsonaro government. According to investigations, the attack plan was photocopied by General Fernandes inside an office of the Planalto Presidential Palace, where then-president Jair Bolsonaro, who is not involved in the operation, was located. Fernandes says in his messages that in his plan he coordinated both rural producers and truck drivers camped in pro-Bolsonaro garrisons installed in front of barracks in many Brazilian cities.
According to the Federal Police, General Fernandes, in a conversation with Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro’s former right-hand man, said he had spoken with the then president on December 8, 2022 about the possible coup. The general tells Cid that Bolsonaro would have told him that the “officialization of Lula’s victory on December 12, 2022 would not be an obstacle to a plan to prevent his inauguration.” “Any action we take can take place until December 31 and everything else,” Bolsonaro reportedly told Fernandes according to the general’s version. The investigations also revealed the military’s impatience with the former president. The group was worried that Bolsonaro might back down. In December, General Fernandes, in an audio, had asked the then prime minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, General Luiz Eduardo Ramos Baptista Pereira, to “protect the president from any disincentive, from any different advice.”
A few weeks later, Fernandes sent another message to Colonel Reginaldo Vieira de Abreu expressing his anxiety for Bolsonaro to sign the coup decree. According to the Federal Police, the plan was discussed at Braga Netto’s house on November 12, 2022. This is confirmed by statements to investigators by Mauro Cid, who described Fernandes as “one of the most radical soldiers” in his confession to the police, and also some documents seized in Tuesday’s operation. Braga Netto was one of the strongest names in the Bolsonaro government and was chosen by the former president to form the list that would aspire to re-election in 2022.
As for Bolsonaro, he learned the news of the operation while fishing in São Miguel dos Milagres, in the northeastern state of Alagoas. According to information from some of his political allies, The former president avoided going into details, but described the operation as an “attempt” by Lula to demonstrate during the G20 that he was a “democrat” by arresting alleged “coup plotters.”. your son Flaviosenator of the Liberal Party (PL), commented on his social networks that «As disgusting as it may be to think about killing someone, it is not a crime.», he wrote in his profile “Judicial decisions without legal support are reprehensible and undemocratic,” he wrote. This is a bill presented in April 2023 “to prevent crimes such as massacres in Brazilian schools”, but which has yet to be discussed by the Senate’s Constitution and Justice Commission. One of the former president’s loyalists, neo-Pentecostal pastor Silas Malafaia, also commented on Tuesday’s operation. He declared to the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo that “desiring means nothing. I repudiate any evil desire against anyone, okay? But tell me where is the materiality of the crime? “Everything is a game for the farce of the coup,” he said, adding that “it is one more narrative to incriminate Bolsonaro.” A PL deputy, Antônio Carlos Rodrigues, in the opposite direction of his party, instead praised “the courage of Judge Moraes.” In recent weeks, the Bolsonaro right has experienced increased pressure with last week’s attack in Brasilia in front of the STF building of a Bolsonarista who, after throwing two incendiary bombs, was hit by one of them and died.
President Lula was alerted early Tuesday of the arrests by the director general of the Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues.. “The president’s reaction was surprise and indignation,” declared Rodrigues. Several members of his government made statements. The minister of the Secretariat of Social Communication (Secom), Paulo Pimenta, said that the episode entailed “extremely serious” elements in relation to the participation of members of the former president’s core government. For the federal deputy and president of the Workers’ Party (PT), Gleisi Hoffmann, the case is “extremely serious.” “There have been conspiratorial meetings, discrediting of the polls, embezzlement of money to organize the arrival of the Bolsonaro caravans in front of the barracks,” Hoffmann wrote in his official X account.
The president of the STF, Luís Roberto Barrosoalso spoke out about the operation, stating that this case “is horrible and disgraces the country.” “Everything indicates that we were closer than we imagined to the unimaginable,” Barroso said. As for Alexandre de Moraes, involved in the operation as a possible victim and also as a judge in the case, in his decision to authorize police intervention, he described the crimes as “extremely serious” and the soldiers detained for the alleged coup plot as “extremely serious.” dangerous.” In the document, the magistrate also mentions military and terrorist techniques and suspects the use of the public-military apparatus in planning by those arrested.
in the diary The State of São Paulothe columnist Ricardo Corrêa writes that “there are several unanswered questions. Who had the idea of the plan? Who else knew? And who should have given the final order of execution? The main question, however, is why the plan was not carried out. The question is also relevant from a legal point of view. Although the articulation of a coup plan and the pressure on the Armed Forces are punishable crimes in themselves, it would be necessary to know how far they went and why the plan was canceled. This would explain whether they were only in the phase of preparatory acts, not punishable by the crime itself, or already at the beginning of the execution, interrupted by factors beyond their control,” writes Corrêa.
