Brazil came close to a far-right military coup and the assassination of a Supreme Court judge just days before President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came to power in January 2023, a federal police report claims.
The report into the alleged plot to help right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro stay in power was made public on Tuesday, painting a chilling portrait of how close one of the world’s largest democracies came to returning to authoritarian rule.
The 884-page document details a complex, three-year conspiracy that investigators say was intended to pave the way for a military takeover by using social media to spread false claims of election fraud that the conspirators hoped would spur such an intervention in would justify public interest. .
Related: Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro is accused of plotting a coup
Police claim the plot would reach “its peak” on December 15, 2022 – a fortnight before Lula was due to be sworn in after narrowly defeating Bolsonaro in October’s presidential election.
Conspirators, including several senior military figures, hoped that Bolsonaro would sign a “coup decree” on that day that would essentially allow a military takeover.
On December 16, 2022, “after the completion of the coup,” the report claims that two close allies of Bolsonaro – former Defense Minister General Walter Braga Netto and former Minister of Institutional Security General Augusto Heleno – would be put in charge. of a ‘crisis management’ cabinet.
The federal police report – reviewed by the Guardian – claims that the only reason Bolsonaro did not sign the decree blocking the transfer of power was because the conspirators had failed to secure sufficient support from Brazil’s military top brass.
‘The evidence [gathered] …shows that the Commander of the Navy, Admiral Almir Garnier [Santos]and the Minister of Defense, [Gen] Paulo Sergio [Nogueira de Oliveira]adhered to the coup attempt. However, the [army] commander [Marco Antônio] Freire Gomes and [Carlos de Almeida] Baptista Júnior of the Air Force positioned herself against any measure that would cause an institutional rift in the country,” the report claims.
Federal police said the only thing that prevented the coup attempt was “the unequivocal attitude” of Freire Gomes, Baptista Junior and the majority of the army’s high command. It claimed that those people “remained true to the values that govern the democratic constitutional state and did not succumb to the pressure of coups.”
Bolsonaro was formally accused last week of being one of 37 people involved in a criminal conspiracy aimed at destroying Brazil’s democratic system through a right-wing coup. He denied these accusations on Tuesday, calling them madness.
“I have not spoken to anyone about a coup,” he told reporters in the capital Brasilia. “If someone had come to me about a coup, I would have asked him, ‘What about the day after? What would the world do?’”
However, the Federal Police report claimed: “The evidence obtained in the course of the investigation unequivocally demonstrates that then-President Jair Messias Bolsonaro planned, took action and had direct and effective control over the executive actions carried out by the criminal organization who attempted to carry out a military coup and dismantle the rule of law, which did not happen due to circumstances beyond his control.”
General Braga Netto denied last week that a coup was planned, calling such claims “fanciful and absurd.” General Heleno has not yet commented on the police claims, but publicly denied involvement in coup preparations last year.
General Nogueira de Oliveira and Admiral Almir Garnier Santos have not yet publicly commented on the claims.
The police report shows that conspirators close to Bolsonaro had drawn up contingency plans in case the alleged coup attempt failed. A laptop seized by Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, who was Bolsonaro’s aide during his 2019-2023 presidency, reportedly contained a PowerPoint presentation detailing a military-style escape plan for Bolsonaro “in case the attempted coup was foiled.”
“The plan involves the use of weapons to ensure the escape of the ex-president,” the report adds on the alleged “exfiltration” plan.
The police investigation also contains shocking details about how close the conspirators may have come to kidnapping or murdering Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes.
On December 15, when conspirators pressed unsuccessfully for Bolsonaro to sign the decree authorizing military intervention, the report alleges that at least six members of a pro-Bolsonaro cell “identified themselves at strategic points near the official residence of the minister and the Supreme Court had positioned themselves. the action.” However, at the last minute the “clandestine” mission to “neutralize” Moraes was aborted, police said, partly due to the army chief’s refusal to support the plot.
Police said they also discovered plans to kill Lula and his vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, in Lula’s case with poison or toxic chemicals. The report claimed that Bolsonaro had “full knowledge” of the “operational planning” for such criminal acts.
How did it start?
Brazil’s left-wing president, João Goulart, was overthrown in a coup in April 1964. General Humberto Castelo Branco became leader, political parties were banned and the country was plunged into 21 years of military rule.
Repression increased under Castelo Branco’s harsh successor, Artur da Costa e Silva, who took power in 1967. He was responsible for an infamous decree called AI-5, which gave him far-reaching dictatorial powers and ushered in the so-called “anos de chumbo”. ” (years of leadership), a bleak period of tyranny and violence that would last until 1974.
What happened during the dictatorship?
Supporters of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime – including Jair Bolsonaro – say the country brought security and stability and engineered a decade-long economic “miracle.”
The country also pushed ahead with several pharaonic infrastructure projects, including the still-unfinished Trans-Amazon highway and the 13-kilometer bridge over Rio’s Guanabara Bay.
But the regime, while less violent than those in Argentina and Chile, was also responsible for killing or murdering hundreds of opponents and imprisoning thousands more. Among those imprisoned and tortured was Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, a left-wing rebel at the time.
It was also a period of strict censorship. Some of Brazil’s most beloved musicians – including Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso – went into exile in Europe and wrote songs about their forced departure.
How did it end?
Political exiles began returning to Brazil in 1979 after an amnesty law was passed, paving the way for the return of democracy.
But the pro-democratic ‘Diretas Já’ (direct elections now!) movement only took off in 1984 with a series of large and historic street rallies in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte.
Civilian rule returned the following year and a new constitution was introduced in 1988. The following year, Brazil held its first direct presidential elections in almost three decades.
This week’s revelations have shocked and shocked many citizens in a country that only emerged from 21 years of military dictatorship in 1985. Several of those accused of being part of the 2022 pro-Bolsonaro coup plot were part of that 1964-1985 regime. In the 1970s, General Heleno was an aide to General Sylvio Frota, a notoriously hardline member of the military regime involved in the 1964 coup that overthrew Brazil’s leftist president João Goulart.
“How safe is our democracy?” asked the headline of an opinion article in one of Brazil’s largest newspapers, the Folha de São Paulo, on Tuesday evening.
