Former military commanders confirm that Bolsonaro hatched a plan for a coup | Brazil

The siege is tightening: two of the three members of Brazil’s military leadership confirmed to the Brazilian Federal Police that Jair Bolsonaro summoned them to discuss possible legal formulas to declare a state of siege and ignore Lula da Silva’s victory in the October presidential elections 2022, allowing the defeated candidate to remain in power.

Both General Marco Antônio Freire Gomes, who was then commander of the Army, and Brigadier Carlos Almeida Baptista Júnior, who headed the Air Force, claim to have refused to support the conspiracy, but they say that Almir Garnier, who was at the head of the Navy, made its troops available to Bolsonaro.

Based on statements made in recent weeks by Freire Gomes and Baptista Júnior – which the judge investigating the case against the former President made partially public on Friday – authorities now believe that a document they found in the former minister’s house of Justice Anderson Torres and responsible for security in the Federal District was “the latest version of a series of coup drafts discussed by Bolsonaro with allies”, summarizes in the text published in the early hours of Saturday the newspaper Newspaper.

According to the summary made public, Freire Gomes “emphasizes” that “he made it clear to Bolsonaro and the Minister of Defense [general Paulo Sérgio Nogueira] that the Army would not accept any act of institutional rupture”, even warning him that it would arrest him if he continued with his plans to “attack the democratic regime”.

The former Air Force commander believes that the position taken by Freire Gomes was essential to prevent the use of the document. Taking into account the availability of the head of the Navy, “if the commander [Freire Gomes] had agreed, it is possible that an attempted coup d’état would have occurred, he said, quoted by the police.

Baptista Júnior also highlighted the role of Anderson Torres in the meetings, explaining that the former minister “sought to highlight legal aspects that supported the exceptional measures”, advising the still head of state “in relation to the legal measures that the executive branch could adopt in the scenario discussed”.

Like Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp, who made a plea bargain agreement, the two commanders mention at least three meetings in which various versions of the minutes were discussed.

The former commanders were interrogated as part of the investigation into the attacks against the headquarters of the Three Powers in Brasília, on January 8, 2023, a week after Lula took office. A parliamentary commission of inquiry – proposed by a group of Bolsonaro deputies – concluded, in October, that the former President was the moral and intellectual author of the attacks, which the justice system has framed as an attempted coup.

In February, the Federal Police said they had already identified a criminal organization formed to overthrow the pillars of the rule of law and “obtain a political advantage by keeping the then President in power”. These conclusions were based, in part, on the document that would have been approved by Bolsonaro and which included instructions on how the coup should take place, foreseeing, in particular, the arrest of Federal Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes and the president of the Senate , Rodrigo Pacheco.

This draft, found in January 2023 at the home of the former Minister of Justice, “was the draft of a decree for Bolsonaro to establish the state of defense at the headquarters” of the Superior Electoral Court, with the aim of reversing the results of the elections and the President Lula’s victory, writes Sheet.

Freire Gomes has now stated that the document corresponds to the same version that Bolsonaro presented to the heads of the Armed Forces at a meeting in December 2022.

More than 1,400 people were accused of involvement in the attacks on Congress, the Supreme Court and the Palácio do Planalto, which is the seat of the presidency, reflecting the conspiracy theories propagated by Bolsonaro and his allies that Lula’s victory had no been legitimate. So far, 131 people have been convicted. With his passport seized since February, the former President is prevented from leaving Brazil.