Brazil’s Supreme Court upholds arrests of Jair Bolsonaro allies accused of attempted coup

Judge Alexandre de Moraes, rapporteur of the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil (STF) for investigations into attacks on institutions and the democratic regime, confirmed and confirmed on Friday evening the preventive arrests of four people very close to former President Jair Bolsonaro, detained this Thursday during the mega-operation of the Federal Police (PF), which also searched and seized the former ruler’s beach house in Angra dos Reis, on the coast of Rio de Janeiro state. The extensive PF report accuses the prisoners of being involved in plotting a coup in 2022 to keep Bolsonaro as president even after he was defeated in the presidential election that October by Lula da Silva.

The four prisoners whose preventive measures were confirmed by Moraes are Felipe Martins, special adviser to Jair Bolsonaro on international affairs and legal adviser to the president between 2019 and 2022, Colonel Marcelo Camara, who during the same period was one of the aides-de-camp of the then president, and after At the end of his term, in December 2022, he became the personal adviser to Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Martins, a special forces soldier of the Brazilian army, and Valdemar da Costa Neto, president of the Liberal Party, the largest in Congress, from whom Bolsonaro sought re-election. Initially, Valdemar was only the subject of a search and seizure at his apartment in Brasilia, but during a search of the place, agents discovered an illegal weapon and a nugget of gold of rare purity, and he was arrested in operation and without a license, on bail, since gold is legally is the property of the state and Bolsonaro’s ally could not explain the origin of the mineral he protects.

Lawyers for all the prisoners denounced the arbitrary and illegal arrests and said their clients were being politically persecuted by the Federal Police, now under the command of Lula da Silva’s government, and Judge Alexandre de Moraes, whom Bolsonaro considers his worst enemy. But the arrests were upheld on the basis of the same 135-page resolution that served as the basis for the PF operation carried out the day before and which details, including with video, the preparations for the attempt at democratic rupture underway in the final months of Jair Bolsonaro’s mandate and which, according to corporation, was not implemented only because at the last moment the high command of the army, which knew everything, decided not to join.