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Brazil’s attorney general’s office on Friday asked the Supreme Court to include former president Jair Bolsonaro in the investigation into who caused the January 8 riots in the country’s capital.
As the basis for the request, prosecutors in a group recently formed to fight anti-democratic actions cited a video Bolsonaro posted on Facebook two days after the riots. The video states that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was not elected to office, but was elected by the Supreme Court and the Brazilian electoral authority.
Otherwise, Bolsonaro has not commented on the election since his October 30 defeat. He has repeatedly cast doubt on the reliability of the country’s electronic voting system when voting, then made requests to cancel millions of ballots using the machine and never acknowledged it.
Prosecutors argued that even if Bolsonaro posted the video after the riots, the content was sufficient to justify investigating his earlier actions. Bolsonaro deleted the video the morning after it was posted.
Authorities are investigating who allowed Bolsonaro’s radical supporters to attack the Supreme Court, Congress and the presidential palace in an attempt to overturn the October election results.
Targets of the investigation include those who paid to transport rioters to the capital and local security personnel who may have stopped the riots from happening.
A warrant was issued for the former minister of justice
Much attention has so far been focused on Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro’s former justice minister, who became head of security for the federal district on January 2, and was in the US on the day of the riots.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Torres’ arrest this week and opened an investigation into his actions, which he called “neglect and collusion.”
In his ruling, which was made public on Friday, de Moraes said that Torres fired his subordinates and left the country before the riots, an indication that he deliberately laid the groundwork for the riots.
The court also issued an arrest warrant for Torres and said he must return within three days or Brazil will request his extradition, Justice Minister Flavio Dino said Friday.
“If by next week his appearance has not been confirmed, we will certainly use the mechanism of international legal cooperation. We will start the procedure next week to carry out the extradition,” said Dino.
Torres has denied wrongdoing, and said in a January 10 post on Twitter that he will interrupt his vacation to return to Brazil and now defend. He has not done so.
Authorities focused on documents found in Torres’ home
Dino pointed to a document found by Brazilian federal police during a search of Torres’ home; a draft decree that would seize control of Brazil’s electoral authority and potentially invalidate the election.
The origin and authenticity of the unsigned document is unclear, and it is not known whether Bolsonaro or his subordinates took steps to enforce the unconstitutional measure, according to analysts and the Brazilian academy of electoral law and politics.
But the document “will be found in the police investigation, because it more fully shows the existence of a chain of people responsible for the criminal event,” Dino said, noting that Torres must tell the police who planned it.
By failing to initiate an investigation into the document’s author or report its existence, Torres could be charged with dereliction of duty, said Mario Sergio Lima, a political analyst at Medley Advisors.
Torres said on Twitter that the document was probably found in a pile together with others intended for shredding, and that it was leaked out of context to feed a false narrative aimed at discrediting him.
Dino told reporters that there is no connection between the riots in the capital and Bolsonaro, who has been in Florida since the end of December.
A former federal district governor and a former military police chief are also targets of a Supreme Court investigation made public on Friday. Both were removed from their posts after the riots.
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