Brazilian police said Thursday they were treating the failed bomb attack on the Supreme Court as a possible “terrorist act,” seeking to uncover whether there were “links” to far-right riots that hit Brasilia in January 2023.
Tension suddenly rose in a highly sensitive security context: left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva hosts a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday and Tuesday, then Chinese President Xi Jinping on a state visit to Brasilia.
On Wednesday evening, a man carrying explosives tried unsuccessfully to enter the Supreme Court building before blowing himself up. There were no injuries.
The seat of the country's highest court is located in Three Powers Square, the heart of Brazilian democracy, where it faces the presidential palace and Parliament.
Investigators are working on two avenues which are not mutually exclusive: those of a “terrorist act” and an attempt at “violent abolition of the rule of law”, indicated at a conference of urges the Director General of the Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues.
Police identified the assailant, whose motives are still unknown, as Francisco Wanderley Luiz. During local elections in 2020, he ran for the post of municipal councilor under the colors of the Liberal Party of Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right president then in power.
The Bolsonaro camp spoke of an “isolated” act due to a “crazy person”. On the social network
According to the head of the Federal Police, the first indications point to a “long-term preparation” of this “individual act” and possible “links” with the Bolsonarist riots against the seats of the executive, legislative and parliamentary branches. judicial on the same square in the capital on January 8, 2023.
“This is not an isolated fact,” he said.
Lula, who was not at the presidential palace at the time of the explosions, did not comment on the subject.
He received several ambassadors there on Thursday morning, who entered via a side access and not via the main ramp, noted an AFP photographer.
– Explosives in a house –
“It is an attack against an institution of the Republic, the power of the Republic,” said Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin, who is at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Security forces found other “homemade” explosives in a house where the alleged assailant lived in the western area of the capital, police chief Andrei Passos Rodrigues revealed.
On Wednesday evening, two detonations occurred in a short period of time, around 7:30 p.m. (10:30 p.m. GMT).
There was first an explosion, that of a car which was in a parking lot near the Parliament, from which the attacker rushed out.
Then “this individual approached the Federal Supreme Court, tried to enter, did not succeed and the explosion occurred in front of the door,” said the vice-governor of Brasilia, Celina Leao.
In images from a CCTV camera broadcast by TV Globo, we can see a man lighting and then throwing several explosive objects producing a bright glow towards the Supreme Court building. Seeing security guards approaching him, he then lays down on the ground and places another similar object under his head, causing a loud explosion.
– “Impunity” –
On January 8, 2023, a week after Lula's return to power, thousands of supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, defeated in the presidential election at the end of 2022, stormed and ransacked the headquarters of institutions on the Place des Trois-Pouvoirs. .
Alexandre de Moraes, powerful judge of the Supreme Court, is leading investigations into this alleged coup attempt, the spectacle of which recalled the assault on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021 in the United States.
“We must not only unite for the defense of democracy, but also for the accountability of those who have undermined it, because impunity ends up causing events like that of yesterday,” declared this magistrate on Thursday. He is now also responsible for investigating the attempted attack.
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