Brazilian authorities have charged the country’s far-right former president, Jair Bolsonaro, and dozens of his supporters with attempting to stage a coup to overturn his 2022 election loss, the country’s top prosecutor has announced.
Bolsonaro and 33 other people, including some former ministers and an ex-navy chief, were charged with Brazil’s Supreme Court, according to prosecutor general Paulo Gonet on Tuesday.
According to the charging document, “a criminal organization led by Jair Messias Bolsonaro and funded by an authoritarian project of power” bears the brunt of the responsibility for acts against the democratic order.
If Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, decides against holding Bolsonaro, a former army captain who served as president from 2019 to 2022, before he is detained before his trial, he is unlikely to be charged with causing flight risk.
The 69-year-old had been plotting his increasingly unlikely political comeback, and the indictment is the first time Brazilian authorities have charged him with a crime.
The charges come following a two-year Brazilian federal police investigation – which concluded in November – into Bolsonaro’s role leading an election-denying movement that culminated in thousands of his supporters rioting in the country’s capital, Brasilia, in January 2023.
Following Bolsonaro’s narrow victory in the 2022 national election, leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office one week later.
Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Brazil’s presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court in scenes reminiscent of the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, DC, when United States President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol building.
Violent overthrow
In their report, published in November, police accused Bolsonaro, along with 36 others, of planning the “violent overthrow of the democratic state”.
Valdemar Costa Neto, the leader of his Liberal Party, Walter Braga Netto, Augusto Heleno, an ex-national security adviser, and former justice minister Anderson Torres are just a few of the Bolsonaro administration officials who are also accused of being involved.
Bolsonaro, who has denied breaking any laws, has labelled allegations against him a politically motivated witch-hunt orchestrated by his opponents.
Due to his actions following the 2022 election, judges previously ruled against him from running for president in 2026.
Brazilian police also uncovered five individuals’ conspiracies in November to assassinate Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and President Lula before their election in December 2022.
Source: Aljazeera
Leave a Reply