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RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 10 (AP) — Brazilian authorities said Monday they were investigating who may have been behind a shocking uprising that saw protesters storm the hall of national power and was linked to 2021 riots. The riots of January 6, 2009 bear striking parallels. , an uprising at the U.S. Capitol.
Thousands of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro packed Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace on Sunday in an unprecedented show for Latin America’s largest nation. Many of them said they wanted Brazil’s military to return far-right Bolsonaro to power and oust the new leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Also on Monday, police stormed a pro-Bolsonaro camp outside a military building and detained about 1,200 people there, the Justice Ministry press office told The Associated Press. The federal police press office said the force had planned to prosecute around 1,000 people.
Lula and the heads of the Supreme Court, Senate and Lower House signed a letter condemning the attack and said legal measures were being taken.
Justice Minister Flávio Dino told reporters that police had started tracking people who paid for the buses that transported protesters to the capital. The rioters, who clearly aimed to cause a domino effect across the country with their show, could be charged with a range of crimes, including organized crime, staging a coup and violently dismantling the democratic rule of law, he told a news conference on Monday.
“We think the worst is over,” Dino said, adding that the government’s focus now is on punishing lawbreakers and those who facilitate them. “We cannot and will not compromise on the fulfillment of our legal obligations because such fulfillment is essential so that such incidents do not repeat themselves.
Thugs wearing green and yellow flags broke windows, toppled furniture and threw computers and printers to the ground. They punched holes in a massive Emiliano Di Cavalcanti painting in the presidential palace and destroyed other works of art. They toppled a U-shaped table where Supreme Court justices convene, tore out the door of a judge’s office and vandalized a statue outside the courthouse. The interior of the building was reduced to ruins.
A further 300 people were arrested on Monday, in addition to the 300 arrested during the riots on Sunday.
The conspicuous slowness of the police response — even after more than 100 buses arrived — led many to question whether authorities were simply ignoring the flood of warnings, underestimating the strength of the protesters, or somehow complicit.
Prosecutors in the capital said local security forces were at least negligent. A Supreme Court judge temporarily suspended the district governor. Another judge accused the authorities of not being quick to crack down on Brazil’s budding neo-fascism.
Bolsonaro, who is headed to Florida after his Oct. 30 election defeat, has been fanning the belief among his diehard supporters that the country’s electronic voting system is prone to fraud, though he has never provided any evidence. His lawmaker son Eduardo Bolsonaro has held numerous meetings with former US President Donald Trump, longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon and his top campaign adviser Jason Miller .
By early Monday afternoon, news spread that Bolsonaro had been hospitalized with abdominal pain, and the remaining Bolsonaro supporters had dispersed. His condition is unclear, but a photo published in Brazilian newspaper O Globo shows him smiling in a hospital bed. He has been hospitalized multiple times since being stabbed in 2018. A hospital spokesman did not immediately return calls and text messages.
In a joint statement issued in Mexico City, U.S. President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the “improper attack on Brazilian democracy.” and peaceful transfer of power”.
The results of Brazil’s election – the closest in more than three decades – were quickly endorsed by politicians across the spectrum, including some of Bolsonaro’s allies, as well as dozens of governments. Bolsonaro’s swift disappearance from view has surprised almost everyone. He neither conceded defeat nor called out fraud, and despite his and his party’s plea to cancel millions of votes, the plea was quickly dismissed.
Brazilians have been using an electronic voting system since 1996, which security experts believe is less secure than handwritten ballots because it leaves no auditable paper trail. But Brazil’s system has come under scrutiny, and domestic authorities and international observers have never found evidence it was being used to commit fraud.
Still, Bolsonaro supporters refused to accept the result. They blocked roads and camped outside military buildings, urging the armed forces to intervene. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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