Police identified him as Francisco Wanderley Luiz. 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 Bolsonaro camp spoke of an “isolated incident” caused by a “crazy person”.
On X, the former head of state published a message of appeasement, an unusual register for him, advocating “dialogue” and “union”.
“I appeal to all political currents and to the leaders of national institutions so that, in this moment of tragedy, they take the necessary measures to move towards national pacification,” he wrote.
This attempted attack awakens the memory of the Bolsonarist riots against the seats of the executive, legislative and judicial branches in the same square in the capital in January 2023.
It takes place in a particularly strong context: left-wing President Luiz Inacio 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.
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, according to his team. 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 –
Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, who is at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, described the facts as “sad” and “serious” and called for the investigation to be “extremely rapid and rigorous”. “It is an attack against an institution of the Republic, the power of the Republic,” he said.
Security forces found other explosives in a house where the suspected assailant lived, in the western area of the capital, a spokesman for the Brasilia military police, Raphael Van Der Broocke, told the channel on Thursday. GloboNews.
On Wednesday evening, two detonations occurred in a short period of time, around 7:30 p.m. (10:30 p.m. GMT), and caused no injuries.
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”, told the press on Wednesday evening the vice-governor of Brasilia, Celina Leao.
According to preliminary information, it is a “suicide”, continued the official, evoking the trail of “a lone wolf”.
Laiana Costa, an official at the Union Audit Court, another official body, told local media she saw a “man passing”: “Suddenly I heard a noise, I looked behind, There was fire and smoke.”
– “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, a 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, who was also responsible for investigating the attack the day before.
Lula will host a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday and Tuesday, bringing together most of the leaders of the world’s main economies. On Wednesday, he is due to receive the Chinese president on a state visit to Brasilia.
