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The far-right ex-president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, was questioned this Wednesday by the Federal Police about his possible role in the riots of January 8, which occurred a week after the inauguration of the leftist head of state, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro, who is between a rock and a hard place, faces several threats of prosecution, although he strongly denies his involvement in the events of that day.
What was the role of the former Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, in the looting, on January 8, of the places of power in Brasilia? This is what the Brazilian Federal Police, which began questioning the former head of state this Wednesday morning (local time), is trying to find out.
In mid-April, a Supreme Court judge had ordered Bolsonaro, who was in Orlando, United States, at the time of the incidents, to be questioned.
According to journalists from the AFP news agency, the former president arrived at the Federal Police headquarters in a vehicle with tinted windows and did not make any statement.
As evidence against him, the Prosecutor’s Office pointed to a video published on January 10 (two days after the riots) by the former president, to challenge the results of Lula’s election. But according to Bolsonaro’s lawyers, the video in question had mistakenly ended up on the former president’s social networks. “It was by mistake, so much so that shortly after, two or three hours later, he was warned and he immediately withdrew it,” declared one of his defenders outside the Federal Police headquarters, according to the newspaper ‘O Globo’. .
A parliamentary commission of inquiry on January 8
The former Brazilian president has always denied his involvement in the attack that took place a week after the inauguration of the left-wing head of state, Lula. The latter had beaten him by a short distance in the presidential elections (50.9% against 49.1%), two months earlier. A victory that Bolsonaro has never acknowledged.
In addition to his summons to testify, the justice also foresees the creation shortly of a parliamentary investigation commission to clarify the many gray areas that surrounded the assault on January 8 in Brasilia, in particular the security failures that allowed the attackers to access so easily to the places of power.
In an apparently orchestrated and synchronized move, thousands of activists who refused to accept Bolsonaro’s defeat had stormed the three centers of power in Brasilia: the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court. The damage to these buildings, treasures of modern architecture and full of works of art, was considerable. Pictures of incalculable value were deteriorated, among them ‘Los Mulatos’, by the modernist painter Di Cavalcanti, which was exhibited in the presidential palace.
After several days of silence, Bolsonaro had spoken on his Twitter account, reluctantly denouncing the attempted insurrection of his supporters. The impressive images of the riots, which caused more than four hours of chaos, were reminiscent of the assault on the Capitol in January 2021 in the United States by supporters of former Republican President Donald Trump.
Pressure hangs around Bolsonaro
After returning from the United States at the end of March, Jair Bolsonaro had already spent about three hours at the federal police headquarters on April 5 in connection with the case of jewelry given away by the Saudi government and smuggled into Brazil.
The former president is accused of having tried to smuggle into the country jewelry from the prestigious Swiss brand Chopard worth three million euros; a gift from the Saudi government. The events occurred in October 2021 when Bolsonaro sent his Minister of Mines and Energy, Bento Albuquerque, to Riyadh to represent Brazil at the “Green Middle East” summit. Upon his return, on October 26, customs agents at the Guarulhos international airport, in São Paulo, discovered a jewelery box hidden in the backpack of an adviser to Minister Albuquerque.
The jewels should have been declared, so they were immediately seized by the tax authorities. The diamonds were actually a gift from the Saudi government to Bolsonaro and his wife Michelle Bolsonaro. The former president allegedly asked his minister to smuggle the diamonds into Brazil to avoid paying high customs duties.
Also the subject of 16 other investigations by the Superior Electoral Court, the former head of state could be sentenced to eight years of ineligibility, which would prevent him from running in the 2026 presidential elections.
AFP, Local media
