It also takes place in a particularly strong context: left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is hosting a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week and a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Brasilia. “First there was the explosion (of a) car”, then an “individual approached the Federal Supreme Court, tried to enter, did not succeed and the explosion is produced in front of the door,” Brasilia Vice-Governor Celina Leao told the press. According to preliminary information, it was a “suicide”, continued the manager, evoking the trail of “a lone wolf”.
“A kind of bomb”
According to a police document published by the GloboNews channel, the man's name was Francisco Wanderley Luiz and he was also the owner of the car. The vice governor said clues point to him. During local elections in 2020, he was a candidate for the post of municipal councilor under the colors of the Liberal Party of Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right president then in power. The Supreme Court is located on the Place des Trois-Pouvoirs, where it faces the presidential palace and the Parliament. Lula was not at the presidential palace at the time of the explosions, a presidential spokesperson said.
The federal police announced that they had opened an investigation into “the attacks”. At the scene of the explosions, investigators carried out their observations with caution, because the body was surrounded by explosives fitted with a timer. The two detonations occurred within a short period of time around 7:30 p.m. (11:30 p.m. in France) and did not cause any injuries. Police conducting a patrol spotted the vehicle on fire and saw the individual rushing out, reported Sergeant Santos, of the Federal District Military Police (which includes Brasilia).
“There is a kind of bomb in the car, several explosives connected by bricks, but it did not completely catch fire,” he detailed. The Supreme Court had previously announced that at the end of a session “two loud explosions were heard” and that the judges and staff on site were evacuated “as a precautionary measure”. The presidential palace is closed and no one can enter. In pouring rain, the entire square was cordoned off by an imposing deployment of security forces. Laiana Costa, an official at the Union Audit Court, another official body, told local media that she saw a “man passing”: “Suddenly I heard a noise, I looked behind, there was fire and smoke.”
“crap”
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. . The attacks of January 8 were “very significant, sad too, and of course led to a change in the security rules of all powers, of all buildings housing the three powers,” noted the President of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco . Among other sensitive investigations, Alexandre de Moraes, a powerful judge of the Supreme Court, is leading the investigations into this alleged “coup d’état” attempt, the spectacle of which recalled the assault on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021 in the United States.
