Military leaders told police Bolsonaro plotted to remain in power despite defeat
SAO PAULO >> Two top Brazilian military leaders declared to police that former President Jair Bolsonaro presented them a plan for him to remain in power after the 2022 election he lost, but both refused and warned him they would arrest him if he tried it, according to judicial documents released Friday.
The testimonies of Bolsonaro's former army and air force commanders to police, and released by the Supreme Court, include the first direct mentions of the right-wing leader as actively participating in a conspiracy to ignore the results of the October 2022 election won by his rival, current President Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva.
The statements by military commanders during Bolsonaro's term add to his legal woes as prosecutors seek to find links between the far-right leader and the Jan. 8, 2023, riots that trashed government buildings in the capital Brasilia one week after Lula's inauguration.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a frequent target of Bolsonaro and the chairman of the investigation, authorized the release of the documents.
A federal police report said former army commander Marco Antônio Freire Gomes testified that he and other top military leaders attended several last-minute and unscheduled meetings at the presidential palace after the second round of the elections “in which then-President Jair Bolsonaro offered possibilities of using legal tools... regarding the electoral process.”
Gen. Freire Gomes told federal police that in one of the gatherings Bolsonaro told the three commanders of his military and his thenDefense Secretary Paulo Sergio Nogueira he wanted to create a commission to “investigate the confirmation and the legality of the electoral process.”
Freire Gomes said he rejected the idea from the start and told Bolsonaro that such a move “could end in the legal responsibility of the then-president,” according to the federal police document.
WINCHESTER, IND. >> At least three people were killed and dozens were injured after a parade of severe weather marched through Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio overnight, spinning off at least six devastating tornadoes, officials said.
The three deaths occurred near Indian Lake, a reservoir in Ohio that becomes a bustling resort area in the summer. Two women, ages 81 and 70, were found dead in a mobile home park Thursday night, and the body of a 59-year-old man was found in a mobile home in Orchard Island early Friday, said Dr. John O'Connor, the Logan County coroner.
All three people died from “blunt force trauma,” the coroner said. About two dozen others from the area, about 70 miles northwest of Columbus, were treated for broken bones and other wounds, said Laura Miller, a spokesperson for Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine, Ohio. About half of those were still in the emergency room Friday morning, she said.
Meteorologists still were surveying the damage Friday to establish the number and strength of tornadoes. The National Weather Service office in Wilmington, Ohio, had confirmed five in the state by early Friday afternoon, although Kristen Cassady, a meteorologist, said that number could grow.
In eastern Indiana, the towns of Winchester in Randolph County and Selma in Delaware County were badly hit by at least one tornado, which razed buildings and tore roofs off homes.
The homeland security emergency management office in Randolph County said in a statement early Friday that 38 people had been injured, with 12 taken to hospitals.
In Delaware County, which is due west of Randolph, nearly half of all the structures in the small town of Selma were damaged, the county emergency management agency said in a statement. The line of storms was expected to continue Friday.
NEW YORK >> A 32-year-old man who shot a second man in the head during an altercation on a moving train Thursday evening appears to have acted in selfdefense and will not be criminally charged for now, the Brooklyn district attorney said Friday.
The shooting, which followed a frightening, chaotic confrontation on a crowded subway car during the evening rush, left the second man, 36-year-old Dajuan Robinson, in critical but stable condition. The gun he was shot with was one he brought onto the train and brandished during the altercation, the police said.
Oren Yaniv, a spokesperson for the district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, described the shooting as “shocking and deeply upsetting.”
“The investigation into this tragic incident is ongoing,” Yaniv said in a statement, “but, at this stage, evidence of self-defense precludes us from filing any criminal charges against the shooter.”
The confrontation between Robinson, who wound up being shot, and the 32-year-old man, Younece Obuad, occurred as the northbound train pulled into Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in downtown Brooklyn about 4:45 p.m., police said.
The men were identified by three law enforcement officials with knowledge of the investigation and internal police records shared with The New York Times.
Robinson and Obuad did not know each other, the police said, and it was not clear how the altercation began. But cellphone video of the episode that captured the minutes leading up to the shooting shows Robinson, the eventual victim, screaming threats and racist remarks at Obuad.