Former adviser confirms Bolsonaro asked military leaders to carry out coup

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro gathered the top brass of the Armed Forces late last year and asked the military to help him carry out an action that would keep him in power and prevent the winner of the October presidential election from taking office. Lula da Silva. The accusation, which confirms persistent rumors and threats that the ruler himself has made throughout his term, appears in a joint statement made to the federal police by Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp, Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, who began cooperating with justice after his former boss tried to prosecute him for violations. which he is accused of.

According to a statement given by Sid to the police, Jair Bolsonaro gathered the Minister of Defense, the commanders of the army, navy and air force, his ministers of war and other high-ranking officers whom he trusted, and asked them to support him in an exceptional measure that would prevent a change of government and preserve it as President of the Republic with emergency powers. This meeting discussed the terms of an emergency measure known as GLO, Guarantee of Law and Order, provided in the Constitution for exceptional moments, by which the Armed Forces would take control of the country under the pretext of guaranteeing social order, leaving the then head of state in office indefinitely term.

However, according to Mauro Cid, then Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral Almir Garnier Santos, who had already “borrowed” Bolsonaro’s military tanks to prove his strength and put pressure on Congress with a controversial parade without a purpose, a few months ago, on This meeting, he immediately placed his troops at the disposal of the president, who intended to carry out a coup. But the commander of the air force, despite also being very close to the president, remained indecisive, and the commander of the army, Brazil’s largest and most powerful military force, refused to participate in this institutional rupture, leading to the proposed coup. Bolsonaro is not feasible.

Mauro Cid said in his testimony that he himself participated in a meeting with high military commanders to discuss the terms of this GLO, which would give an appearance of apparent legitimacy to the coup, arguing that it was a measure to avoid civil war in Brazil. . Drafts of this document were found by federal police in the mobile phones seized from Mauro Cid and Bolsonaro’s former justice minister Anderson Torres when they were arrested several months ago.