It is the question of the moment in Brazil. Will the former president be arrested Jair Bolsonaro? In these hours, the Attorney General’s Office has shed light on the ongoing debate. It won’t be until next year, and probably not before February, the attorney general said Paulo Gonetthat a decision will be made about the former president and the other 36 people accused with him on Thursday of attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, coup d’état and criminal association. In other words, The judges will be able to accept the accusation of the Federal Police (PF) presented before the Supreme Federal Court and bring Bolsonaro and the other 36 defendants to trial by filing a complaint before the STF. Bolsonaro, in this case, faces up to 28 years in prison. Or they may consider that the evidence is not enough and ask for more to be presented. Finally, the third possibility is the dismissal of the case. The STF judge Alexandre de Moraeswho is leading the process on the coup attempt, will send the PF report to the Attorney General’s Office on Monday and has already made it known that will be sealed. This is an unprecedented decision regarding the other two investigations in which the former president is involved, those of the Covid vaccination card fraud and that of the jewelry received as a gift from Saudi Arabia and stolen from the presidential deposit. In these two cases the seal had been lifted. But This time the case is more delicate, it involves dozens of soldiers and, according to Moraes, it is necessary to guarantee “quiet work” for Gonet. The attorney general’s intention, once he receives the report, is to examine the coup case along with the vaccines and jewelry “to see how it all fits together,” he said, favoring “film and not photography.” Eight prosecutors, some members of the STF’s Criminal Legal Advice (AJCRIM) and the Strategic Group to Combat Antidemocratic Acts (GECAA), which has a coordinator directly assigned to the Attorney General’s Office, will help in the prosecution’s work.
In the last few days, the judicial case about Bolsonaro and the alleged coup attempt had accelerated with the Anti-Coup operation on Tuesdaywhich uncovered a plan to poison Lula and his vice Alckmin in December 2022. Five soldiers were detained, including a general, Mario Fernandesformer executive secretary of the Presidency of the Republic in the Bolsonaro government. According to the Federal Police, “Jair Bolsonaro was fully aware of the plan to kill Lula”, as stated in the report delivered this Thursday to the Supreme Federal Court on the coup attempt planned after Lula’s victory, on October 30, 2022. For the Federal Police, the main architect of the alleged coup plan was one of the loyalists to the former president, Walter Braga Net. According to two PF investigators stated to the news site G1Braga Netto was “the brain responsible for making the coup operational”. And the general had to integrate an Institutional Crisis Management Cabinet immediately after the coup due to the charisma he had among the military. Former Minister of Defense and Civil House of the Bolsonaro government, it was at his house that a meeting was held on November 12, 2022, from which, according to the Federal Police, a series of “suspicious” messages and activities began.
The report indicates that the meeting was also attended by Mauro Cidlieutenant colonel and former aide-de-camp of Bolsonaro, the oldest Rafael Martins de Oliveira and lieutenant colonel Hélio Ferreira Limaboth from the Army. However, as the newspaper highlights Folha de São Pauloenter “the gaps” from the report is the fact that “despite the temporal correlation between the meeting and the initiation of various suspicious acts and messages, there is no element in the minutes that indicates what was actually discussed at that meeting.” Mauro Cid said on Thursday during his interrogation at the STF that Braga Netto attended that meeting, but that he did not know what was discussed. Cid also said he did not know if former President Bolsonaro was aware of General Fernandes’ plan to assassinate President Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Moraes. His lawyer, however, previously said live on TV Globo that “the president knew everything. “He was responsible for this organization.” However, a few minutes later it was corrected. “One important thing to correct: I did not say that Bolsonaro knew everything. But clearly he knew something. The president, according to information, was aware of the events that were developing, that something was being prepared. But not an execution plan or coup d’état,” he said.
Of the 37 people accused on Thursday by the Federal Police, 25 belong to the Armed Forces. Among them are the former Army commander, Estevam Theophilo Gaspar de Oliveiraand the commander of the Navy, Almir Garnier Santos. The general is also on the list Augustus Helenusformer National Security Cabinet Minister, and former head of the intelligence agency, Abin Alexander Ramagemcurrently federal deputy for Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL). Among those accused by the Federal Police there is also a foreigner, the Argentine influencer Fernando Cerimedo, who runs the website “La Derecha Diario.” In addition to informally supporting Bolsonaro’s 2022 reelection campaign, he worked as an external consultant and digital strategy coordinator for Javier Milei’s 2023 presidential campaign. In Argentina, meanwhile, a fourth Brazilian fugitive, Joel Borges Correa, was arrested on Tuesday when he tried to flee to Chile. He was wanted by the Brazilian police because he had been sentenced to 13 years and six months for participating in the looting of institutional buildings in Brasilia on January 8, 2023. The Argentine justice system, at the request of the Brazilian STF, issued an order against 61 fugitives from the January 8. It stipulates that they must be detained and then extradited to Brazil.
The first to distance himself was the Minister of Defense, José Múcio Monteiro. “Everyone is responsible for their actions. Our institution was not and is not involved in this matter,” he declared. The minister also highlighted the firmness of Army commanders Freire Gomes and Air Force commander Batista Jr. The two revealed in their interrogation with the PF that they were presented with a copy of the coup attempt that they both opposed. Only Navy Commander Garnier Santos, who appears on Thursday’s list of defendants, declared in favor. The leadership of the Armed Forces said they were aware that this case represents a terrible stain for the corporation, but that it could be an opportunity to take politics out of the barracks. In fact, a proposal from the Armed Forces themselves is being debated in Congress for an amendment to the Constitution that forces soldiers who want to run for political office to go into reserve status.
Lula also spoke ironically on Friday about the news of the poisoning attempt. “I should be even more grateful now because I am alive. The attempt to poison Alckmin and me failed. we are still here”, he stated. His Workers Party (PT) issued a statement saying that “Bolsonaro owes Brazil explanations, in addition to paying for its crimes.” “Bolsonaro is at the center of a corrupt conspiracy,” the text reads, “that rots everyone around him, not only the accused, but also parliamentarians and even governors who have associated themselves with him.”
According to a newspaper editorial The State of São Paulo“if what the PF claims to have discovered is true, the country was on the verge of collapse and this movement counted, in the benevolent hypothesis, on the omission of Bolsonaro, since it seems impossible that neither he nor the generals who advised him were unaware the plot. Everything becomes even more dramatic if you imagine the less benevolent hypothesis: that Bolsonaro not only knew, but never discouraged sedition, which would prove once and for all his already notorious coup plot.
As for Bolsonaro, he did not interrupt his vacation in São Miguel dos Milagres, in the northeastern state of Alagoas. From there he attacked Judge Alexandre de Moraes. ”Moraes is in charge of the entire investigation, changing statements, arresting without charges and receiving very creative advice. He does everything that is not in the law“said the former president. In this scenario, Bolsonaro’s allies and possible candidates to replace him in the 2026 presidential elections have remained silent in recent days, such as the governors of Minas Gerais, Romeu Zema, of the Novo party, and of Paraná, Ratinho Júnior, of the Social Party. Democrat. The only one who defended Bolsonaro was his former Minister of Infrastructure, Tarcísio de Freitas, current governor of the state of San Pablo with the Republicans party. Tarcísio, as he is commonly called, avoided attacking the judicial institutions, but spoke out in defense of the former president. In Bolsonaro’s son Carlosa councilor in Rio de Janeiro for his father’s PL, attacked on Telegram the man who emerged from the October municipal elections as the new right-wing alternative to Bolsonarism. It is about Pablo Marçalof the Brazilian Labor Renewal Party (PRLB). Marçal had placed third for the mayor of São Paulo and three weeks ago he had invited Bolsonaro to occupy a leadership position in his party, an invitation that the former president declined. “Where is this Pablo Marçal in front of the union of the right at such a necessary moment?“, wrote Bolsonaro’s son, according to which “Marçal was not thrown into the electoral dispute at random.” “Some powerful people will try to push it until 2026,” he added. Marçal himself could run for the presidency of Brazil on the right against Lula’s Workers’ Party in 2026, as he has already hinted. In fact, Bolsonaro’s PL runs the risk of fraying in the next two years, since also its president, Valdemar Costa Netowas accused by the Federal Police.
