Brazilian former president Jair Bolsonaro has been ordered to surrender his passport to police in an investigation into an alleged coup attempt by the far-right leader and his associates following his 2022 election defeat.
The order by supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes came as federal police raided the residences of several military officers close to Mr Bolsonaro and arrested three of the former president’s aides.
The head of Mr Bolsonaro’s right-wing Liberal party, Valdemar Costa Neto, was also arrested. Local media reported that his detention followed the discovery of an illegal weapon in his home during a search.
Police and supreme court documents allege that Mr Bolsonaro and his allies had created a detailed plan to prevent election winner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking office, including a plot to detain Mr de Moraes, supreme court justice Gilmar Mendes and Rodrigo Pacheco, the president of the Senate.
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The documents made public on Thursday, which were used to support arrest warrants in the case, allege that Mr Bolsonaro’s allies had also arranged among themselves to keep Mr de Moraes – who at the time was head of the electoral court overseeing the polls – under surveillance and to intervene if he attempted to stop the coup.
The documentation, mostly compiled from phone records obtained by police, offers the clearest indication yet of how far Mr Bolsonaro and his allies were allegedly willing to go to prevent his removal from office.
In the year ahead of the elections in October 2022, Mr Bolsonaro – a former army captain – repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the polls, in a campaign widely seen as laying the groundwork to contest the results.
The alleged campaign to contest the election, with force if necessary, had the backing of several key military officers, according to police and judicial officials.
The court documents released on Thursday name Almir Garnier, the then-head of the navy, as being ready “to put troops on the ground”. They also cite Estevam Theophilo, an army general who was also the target of a search warrant, as being ready to “take measures to secure the coup”.
Faced with a lack of broader support, however, and after the rapid recognition of Lula as president by key political leaders, Mr Bolsonaro eventually decided to leave Brazil in December 2022. He stayed in Florida for three months while Lula took office in January 2023.
A week after Lula’s inauguration, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters raided and vandalised the country’s supreme court, parliament and presidential palace in Brasília, in what the current left-wing administration has sought to portray as in itself an “attempted coup”.
A spokesman for Mr Bolsonaro on Thursday said the right-wing leader would hand over his passport as requested.
The 68 year old has denied any wrongdoing, but he faces a growing number of investigations stemming from his time in office.
In addition to an inquiry into whether he encouraged the January 8th riots, he faces an investigation into whether he conspired to sell expensive undeclared gifts from overseas dignitaries and another into whether he forged his Covid-19 vaccination certification.
[ Brazilian police raid Bolsonaro home in fake vaccine certs inquiryOpens in new window ]
In the past month, police have also begun investigating whether his administration used the country’s spy agency to illegally monitor the communications of hundreds of politicians, judges and journalists.
Mr Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing in all the cases.
Lula on Thursday criticised Mr Bolsonaro’s behaviour.
“Before the elections, he spent the entire time lying, lying about the ballot boxes [and] creating suspicion,” he said.
“Then he didn’t even have the courage to pass me the [ceremonial presidential] sash. He kept crying and left for the US because he must have participated in the construction of this attempted coup.”
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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