Ex-military staff link Bolsonaro to failed coup bid

BRASÍLIA: Former senior military staff in Brazil have linked ex-president Jair Bolsonaro to an alleged failed bid to stay in power after losing the 2022 election, according to police statements released Friday.

As part of an operation dubbed ‘Tempus Veritatis’ – Latin for ‘Hour of Truth’ – police carried out dozens of search and seizure raids and arrested several Bolsonaro allies who wanted to stop the reeleection of leftist Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva.

The details were made public Friday by order of federal Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes.

Investigators allege months of anti-democratic maneuvers by Bolsonaro, including a plan to discredit Brazil’s electronic voting system with a “disinformation” campaign ahead of the elections to “legitimise a military intervention” if he lost.

The investigators found Bolsonaro had drafted a coup declaration that he had run by senior military officials at a meeting on Dec 7, 2022, three weeks before Lula was sworn in.

In his statement to police, the then army chief Marco Antonio Freire Gomes acknowledged that he had taken part in a meeting at Bolsonaro’s presidential residence in Brasilia, in which an adviser spelled out the legal basis for the planned coup.

He told police that he made it clear the army would not take part in reversing the democratic process.

Air Force ex-chief Carlos Almeida Baptista Junior told investigators Bolsonaro pressed him to keep looking for “mechanisms” to stop Lula from being sworn in again.

Baptista claimed the coup might have taken place had it not been for Freire Gomes’s hard line.

Bolsonaro was among those ordered to testify but he refused to answer questions during an interrogation at federal police headquarters last month. He has denied the accusations against him.