The Public Prosecutor’s Office claims that the then president approved a plan to kill his political rival
The former president's defense is "outraged by the accusations" and describes the complaint as "incoherent"
The Attorney General’s Office of Brazil has filed a suit against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and another thirty people on Tuesday for an attempted coup after the victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the 2022 presidential elections, in what has been the first complaint against a former head of state of the Ibero-American country for trying to attack the rule of law.
The Attorney General, Paulo Gonet, has accused a total of 34 people of “incentivizing and carrying out acts against the Three Powers and against the democratic rule of law,” in reference to the January 2023 assault by a mob of supporters of the former president protesting the election result.
In particular, those accused have been charged with armed criminal organization, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, coup d’état, qualified damage with violence and serious threat against property and with considerable harm to the victim, and deterioration of property.
“The accusations are based on documents, digital files and exchanges of messages that reveal the scheme of breaking the democratic order. And they describe in detail the conspiratorial plot mounted and executed against democratic institutions. The organization had as leaders the president and his vice-presidential candidate,” reads a statement.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office has stressed that Bolsonaro, “together with other people, both civilian and military, tried in a coordinated manner to prevent the fulfillment of the result of the 2022 presidential elections.” However, it has specified that “the plan began in 2021.”
According to the complaint, during the far-right leader’s mandate, he “adopted an increasing tone of rupture with institutional normality in his repeated public statements, in which he expressed his dissatisfaction with decisions of higher courts and with the current electronic electoral system.”
“This escalation gained further momentum when (…) Lula, seen as the strongest contender in the electoral race, became eligible, due to the annulment of his criminal convictions,” the document reads.
In addition, in July 2022, Bolsonaro met with diplomatic representatives accredited in the country “to verbalize the known and denied accusations of fraud in electronic voting machines.” During the second round of elections, security agencies were mobilized “to prevent voters from voting for the opposition candidate.”
He also pointed out that “those involved maintained their rhetoric of fraud and maintained their activism with camps set up in front of Army barracks in several capitals of the country,” while “the criminal organization pressured” senior Army officials, “writing letters and agitating colleagues in favor of forceful actions on the political stage to prevent the president-elect from taking office.”
Gonet has declared that Bolsonaro “approved” an organized plan to carry out the coup, in which “even the death” by poisoning of the president-elect (Lula) “of his vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, and the use of “weapons of war” against Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes were admitted.”
“The violence of January 8 (2023) was the last attempt. The organization encouraged the mobilization of the group of people in front of the Army Headquarters in Brasilia, which called for military intervention in politics. The participants made the tour accompanied and escorted by military police from the Federal District, invading and vandalizing the headquarters of the Three Powers. The episode generated losses of more than 20 million Brazilian reals (3.4 million euros),” he added.
BOLSONARO’S DEFENSE, OUTRAGED BY THE ACCUSATIONS
The former president’s legal team has said it is “shocked and outraged by the accusations made by the Prosecutor’s Office,” since, as it has asserted, Bolsonaro “has never supported any movement that seeks to deconstruct the democratic rule of law or the institutions that enable it.”
In a statement published by lawyer Paulo Cunha, the defense has asserted that “despite two years of investigations – a period in which he was the subject of exhaustive investigative efforts, largely supported by invasive precautionary measures, including the preventive detention of close supporters – no element was found that even remotely linked” Bolsonaro “to the narrative constructed in the complaint.”
“There is no message from the (then) president that supports the accusation, despite a search carried out on his personal phones. The inept accusation goes so far as to attribute to him participation in contradictory plans and based on a single plea agreement, altered several times, by an informant who questions his own voluntariness,” he said.
Therefore, he considered that “it is no coincidence that he changed his version countless times to build a fantastic narrative.” “Bolsonaro trusts Justice and, therefore, believes that this complaint will not prosper due to its precariousness, incoherence and lack of truthful facts to support it before the Judiciary,” he concluded.
In the event that the Supreme Court admits the complaint, the former president will become an accused and will face criminal proceedings in the courts.
