BRASILIA, December 26 (Portal) – A man arrested for attempting to detonate a bomb to protest Brazil’s election results was killed by calls from far-right President Jair Bolsonaro to build a bomb, according to a copy of his police statement Arsenal’s inspired 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 strained election in a generation.
New Justice Minister Flavio Dino said in a TV interview on Monday that security needed to be tightened for Sunday’s inauguration of left-wing President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who defeated incumbent 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 attorney, Jorge Chediak, said he has not yet spoken to Sousa, who is in prison, but said his confession to police was fraught with “contradictions”.
Sousa, a 54-year-old gas station manager from the northern state of Para, told police that Bolsonaro’s voting doubts inspired his Dec. 12 trip to the capital.
Upon arriving in Brasilia, he joined a camp of pro-Bolsonaro election-denials in front of army headquarters, calling for a coup d’état.
“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 the copy of his testimony.
Sousa said he became a registered gun owner, known as CAC, in October last year, joining a group that has grown six-fold to nearly 700,000 people since Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 and began relaxing gun laws.
He said he has since invested nearly 160,000 reais ($30,800) to add to his arsenal. He said he took two 12-gauge shotguns, two revolvers, three pistols, a rifle, over a thousand bullets and five sticks of dynamite on his trip to Brasilia.
“What motivated me to buy the weapons were the words of President Bolsonaro, who always stressed the importance of civilians being armed, saying, ‘An armed population will never be enslaved,'” Sousa said.
He added that he plans to share his guns with other CAC holders at Camp Brasilia. On December 12, the day Lula’s victory was declared, some camp residents attacked the federal police headquarters in Brasilia.
Sousa said he enjoys a certain level of official support.
After the December 12 attack, he said police and firefighters near the camp told him they would not arrest protesters for vandalism unless they attacked police officers. Her remarks led him to believe that “the intervention of the armed forces would soon be declared”.
But as the weeks passed without a coup, he said he and others in the camp had devised a plan to prevent Lula from taking office. Their idea, he said, was “to provoke military intervention and the imposition of a state of siege to prevent the establishment of communism in Brazil.”
A first plan was to detonate a bomb in the Brasilia airport parking lot, followed by anonymous tips of two more bombs in the departure lounge, he said. The conspirators also considered blowing up a substation, he added.
Sousa told police he built the bomb on December 23, using dynamite he brought from Para and a remote detonator given to him by someone else at the camp. He said he gave the bomb to another camper and asked him to install it at the substation, as “I didn’t agree with the idea of detonating it in the airport parking lot”.
That same day, Sousa saw on the news that the police had found the bomb near the airport. After seeing strange men near his rented apartment the next day, he decided to pack his bags and put his guns in the trunk of his car to leave Brasilia, but was arrested by the police before he could leave.
($1 = 5.1877 reais)
Additional reporting by Flávia Marreiro; writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Howard Goller
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