MADRID 26 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The former president of Brazil, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, denied this Monday having participated in conversations about the coup plan after his defeat in the October 2022 elections and has attributed the Federal Police investigation to “political persecution.”
“I have never debated a coup d’état with anyone. If someone came to talk about a coup d’état with me, I would ask: ‘And the day after? How do we stand before the world?’. The word coup d’état has never been in my dictionary. I would never do anything outside the four lines of the Constitution. Everything can be resolved in the four lines,” he declared in a press conference reported by ‘Diario do Centro do Mundo’.
During his speech to journalists, Bolsonaro indicated that he is the victim of “political persecution”, ensuring that he could be arrested at any time. “I can be arrested now, when I leave here,” he said from Brasilia International Airport.
These words come after the Brazilian Federal Police accused him last Thursday, as well as dozens of his allies, of the crimes of violent abolition of the rule of law, attempted coup d’état and criminal organization to keep him in power after the elections. October 2022.
Up to 35 people are accused of attempted coup d’état, a charge that carries penalties of up to 12 years in prison; membership in a criminal gang, with up to eight years in prison; and violent abolition of the rule of law, with maximums of eight years.
The investigation points to a disinformation plot to attack institutions and call into question the reliability of the electoral process and incite the military to take up arms. The financing of these actions and the operations to carry them out and the illegal use of the Intelligence agency are also being investigated.
Thus, it details how Bolsonaro’s close core met with the high command of the Armed Forces, two of whom opposed the plot. The then commanders of the Army, Marco Antônio Freire Gomes, and the Air Force, Carlos de Almeida Baptista Júnior, stated before the Police that the plan had the approval of the former president.
One of the meetings analyzed by the Police is the one that took place in the Alvorada Palace on December 7, 2022, close to the expiration of Bolsonaro’s mandate and with Lula as president-elect. In it, according to General Freire Gomes, an action plan was read that had the support of the then Navy commander, Almir Garnier Santos, who has also been accused.
The Police maintain that there are indications that Bolsonaro participated in the drafting of that decree which was intended to stop the transfer of power. Now the document must go through the Supreme Court before reaching the Prosecutor’s Office, which will decide what to do with it.