By André Romani and Gabriel Stargardter
BRASILIA, Dec. 26 (Portal) – A man arrested for attempting to detonate a bomb at a protest against Brazil’s election result was inspired by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s call to arm himself to build an arsenal according to a copy of his police statement seen by Portal.
George Washington de Oliveira Sousa was arrested on Saturday, a day after police said they foiled his plan to detonate an explosive device near Brasilia airport.
The incident added a new dimension to post-election violence in Brazil, where tensions remain high after the closest election in decades.
New justice minister Flavio Dino said in a TV interview on Monday that security needs to be tightened for Sunday’s inauguration of left-wing President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro.
“We’re not talking about a lone wolf,” Dino said of Sousa. “There are powerful people behind this and the police will investigate. We will not allow political terrorism in Brazil.”
Sousa’s first attorney, Wallison dos Reis Pereira, said he confessed and was cooperating with police. His current lawyer, Jorge Chediak, said he has not yet spoken to Sousa, who is in prison, but claimed his confession to police was fraught with “contradictions”.
Sousa, 54, a gas station manager in the northern state of Pará, told police that Bolsonaro’s voting doubts inspired his trip to the capital on December 12.
Upon arriving in Brasilia, he joined a camp of Bolsonaro supporters in front of army headquarters calling for a coup.
“My trip to Brasilia was to join the protests in front of the army headquarters and wait for the armed forces to authorize me to take up arms and destroy communism,” he said, according to a copy of his statement.
Sousa said he became a registered gun owner in October last year, joining a group that has grown six-fold to nearly 700,000 since Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 and beginning to relax gun ownership laws.
The executive said he has since invested almost 160,000 reais ($30,800) in his arsenal. On his trip to Brasilia, he took with him two 12-gauge shotguns, two revolvers, three pistols, a rifle, more than a thousand bullets and five sticks of dynamite.
“What motivated me to buy the guns were the words of President Bolsonaro, who always emphasized the importance of civilians being armed, saying, ‘An armed population will never be enslaved,'” Sousa said.
(1 dollar = 5.1877 reais)