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Brazilian President Lula said he was confident on Thursday that the door to Planalto Palace was opened to let rioters in during last Sunday’s assault. For their part, the investigators are continuing their work to identify those responsible, in particular those who worked behind the scenes to finance and organize the insurrection.
In Brazil, the government tightened its grip on Thursday January 12 around the participants, organizers and funders of riots from Sunday to Brasiliawhich pushed Lula has “deeply reorganized” its security at the presidential palace.
“I am convinced that the door to the Planalto palace has been opened for people to enter, because no door has been broken,” the left-wing leader said during his first breakfast with journalists since his inauguration. January 1st. “It means that someone facilitated their entry here,” insisted Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. “How could I have someone at my office door who could shoot me?” he asked.
>> To read: Behind the pro-Bolsonaro attack, the leg of the American far right
More than 4,000 supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, who reject his electoral defeat to Lula in late October, wreaked havoc in the capital on Sunday, invading and ransacking the Presidential Palace, Supreme Court and Congress . Some 2,000 people were arrested and more than 1,100 were imprisoned after being questioned, according to the latest report from the authorities.
Agribusiness in the sights
And the noose continues to tighten, with many rioters identified through surveillance cameras, press images or selfies they posted on social media. But the priority of the authorities is now to sanction the networks that worked behind the scenes to finance and organize the insurrection.
On Thursday, the office of the Advocate-General of the Union (AGU), which defends the interests of the federal state, asked the courts of Brasilia to freeze 6.5 million reais (about 1.2 million euros) of 52 people and seven companies accused of having financed the transport of rioters in a hundred buses arriving from all over the country on Saturday evening. According to several Brazilian media, a large number of alleged financiers are linked to the agribusiness sector, loyal support of Jair Bolsonaro.
The assessment of the considerable damage to national heritage, including works of art, was still ongoing. For the two chambers of Congress alone, they amount to more than one million euros, according to the first estimates made public by the government.
Thursday, Lula multiplied the meetings with his ministers, in an apparent concern to return to normality after the shock of this unprecedented attack against Brazilian democracy since the establishment of the military dictatorship (1964-1985).
Calls for Bolsonaro’s expulsion
In the United States, elected Democrats have called for President Joe Biden to revoke the visa of the former Brazilian president, who is in Florida (south), refusing that the United States serve as a refuge for the former leader.
“We must not allow Mr. Bolsonaro or any other former Brazilian official to find refuge in the United States in order to escape justice for any possible crime committed during his mandate”, write these 41 elected officials in an open letter to the President Biden made public on Thursday. They also call on the US government to “cooperate fully with any investigation by the Brazilian government” and to verify the legal status in the United States of the former president, who arrived on American territory as head of state.
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His stay in Florida puts the United States in a relatively embarrassing light, particularly with reference to previous hosts of controversial Latin American leaders. Asked on Wednesday, the head of the American diplomacy Antony Blinken declared that the United States had not received any request from Brazil about Jair Bolsonaro, but that it would process such a request “quickly”.
With AFP