Jair Bolsonaro (left) and his Minister of Justice Anderson Torres in June 2022. EVARISTO SA (AFP)
Police commissioner Anderson Torres, who was no longer justice minister with the end of the Bolsonaro government, was arrested this Saturday morning in connection with the Bolsonaro attack by the three powers last Sunday in Brasilia. Torres was the secretary of public security in the capital when the mob invaded the institutions on the day that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva served a week in the presidency. The threatened coup caught him in Florida anyway, where he traveled with his family on vacation. The former minister turned himself in at the capital’s airport as soon as the flight that brought him from the United States landed. The Supreme Court, which on Friday also ordered investigations into ex-President Jair Bolsonaro for anti-democratic activities, accuses Torres of “fraudulent collusion” with the putschists.
Police this week searched the home of former Attorney General Torres and found among his belongings a draft presidential decree proposing to place the Supreme Court under a state of emergency that would allow the government to intervene and reverse the outcome of the Lula election won Bolsonaro by the hair. The suspect then explained via Twitter that the text of the protocol had been taken out of context.
Supreme Court Justice Alexander de Moraes, who is leading the judicial and police investigation into the invasion of the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court, has accused the politician and former police chief of collusion and omission. Thousands of Bolsonaristas marched nine kilometers on foot from the army headquarters, where they called for the coup, into the political and judiciary heart of Brazil in a demonstration that was escorted by military police and turned violent at the doors of the buildings. They easily scaled the flimsy police barriers and rushed in, destroying everything in their path, including valuable works of art.
As police commissioner, Torres was not interned in a preventive prison prison, but was transferred to a military police headquarters on the outskirts of Brasilia. He will remain there indefinitely pending sentencing.
On the afternoon of the invasion, when it became known that the top political official responsible for ensuring public security in the capital was on vacation and some of the police officers present were more interested in helping the attackers or taking pictures with them to let the governor fire another Bolsonaro supporter Torres. The governor himself, Ibaneis Rocha, was removed from office by the Supreme Court the next day.
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