Former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro remained silent Thursday before police in Brasilia who summoned him for questioning about his alleged involvement in an “attempted coup” to maintain his position of power.
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Surrounded by business, the former head of state, who ruled Latin America's leading power from 2019 to 2022, is more threatened than ever by this sensational investigation.
“The only reason he has remained silent is because today he is responding to a semi-secret investigation,” lawyer Paulo Cunha told the press near the federal police headquarters in Brasilia.
The defense had previously indicated that it would remain silent if it did not have better access to the contents of the file.
According to the local press, several other figures from his camp, including suspected former ministers, were questioned by investigators at the same time as him in several cities across the country.
This new meeting between Mr Bolsonaro and the judiciary comes ahead of a demonstration planned for Sunday in Sao Paulo. The opposition leader, who was sentenced to a ban until 2030 last year for disinformation, called on his supporters to hold a “peaceful assembly” that would allow the extent of his support to be tested.
Mr. Bolsonaro maintains his innocence and says he is the victim of “relentless persecution” by the government of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which defeated him in October 2022 elections.
“No one attempted a coup in Brazil, that is the great truth,” Bolsonaro reiterated in an interview on CBN Radio Recife on Wednesday.
On February 8, a large-scale police operation called “Tempus veritatis” (“The Moment of Truth” in Latin) targeted several former close associates of the ex-president and led to dozens of searches and arrests.
Passport confiscated
Jair Bolsonaro, now banned from leaving the country, is suspected of being involved in a sweeping plan that mobilized ministers and senior military personnel in particular to ensure he remains in power after the 2022 presidential election.
According to investigators, this plan was to discredit Brazil's electronic ballot box system by using “disinformation” to “spread suspicions of fraud in the 2022 presidential election before the vote in order to legitimize military intervention.”
Further suspicions relate to an attempted “military coup to prevent the legally elected president from coming to power”.
According to police, Mr Bolsonaro had personally altered a draft decree aimed at calling new elections and arresting Alexandre de Moraes.
This Supreme Court judge is the bane of the former president for launching a series of investigations against him. He is now leading the investigation into an alleged “coup plot.”
The decree ultimately did not see the light of day, but on January 8, 2023, a week after Lula's inauguration, Brazilian institutions began to falter as thousands of Bolsonarist sympathizers looted places of power in Brasilia. Mr. Bolsonaro was in the United States that day.
The former head of state has already had to answer to the police, in particular on suspicion of forging vaccination certificates against Covid-19 or the alleged embezzlement of gifts from abroad, in particular jewelry offered by Saudi Arabia.
In June he was disenfranchised for eight years for spreading false information about the electoral system.