Bolsonaro denies allegations of involvement in Jan. 8 coup attempt

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
26 Apr 2023 23:27

Former President Jair Bolsonaro denies all allegations of his involvement in the January 8 coup that sought to allegedly overthrow elected President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro leaves Federal Police headquarters after giving testimony over the Jan. 8 attacks in Brasilia, Brazil, Wednesday, April 26, 2023 (AP)

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has denied all allegations regarding his involvement in the January coup that shook Brazil and sought to overthrow his successor, the elected President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro, on Wednesday, appeared before federal police for over two hours as he was being investigated at the headquarters in Brasilia.

While Bolsonaro left without making any comments, his spokesperson Fabio Wajngarten told the press that Bolsonaro had "repudiated all the unfortunate events that happened in Brasilia" during the January coup.

Initially, the request to investigate Bolsonaro came from the Attorney General's office to the Supreme Court in a statement that specified that the investigation looked at the “instigation and intellectual authorship of anti-democratic acts that resulted in episodes of vandalism and violence in Brasilia.”

One reason the investigation was launched was that two days after the riot, Bolsonaro shared a video to social media of a prosecutor contesting the validity of Lula's victory.

The evidence cited by the AG's office which compelled Justice Alexandre de Moraes to grant the request was a video that Bolsonaro had posted to Facebook two days after the Brasilia riots, in which an attorney in Mato Grosso allegedly questioned the legitimacy of Brazil's presidential election that brought President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to office once again.

More specifically, the video argued that Lula da Silva's election was brought on by a decision from the Supreme Court and Brazil's electoral offices rather than through a democratic election, thus questioning the legitimacy of the entire electoral process.

The video, however, was deleted from Facebook the morning after it was posted.

Prosecutors have maintained that, despite the fact that the video was posted after the riots took place, it remained plausible evidence to probe into Bolsonaro's role in the incitement of the riots. The prosecutors further noted that the video had "the power to incite new acts of civil insurgency."

In that regard, Bolsonaro's lawyer Paulo Bueno claimed that the former president was, at the time, under the effect of medication and had just been admitted to hospital when he shared the video which meant that "the sharing was so accidental that he did not mention it afterward and soon deleted it."