Brazil
The video shows Gonçalves Dias in the presidential palace when Bolsonaro supporters rioted in January
Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at 11:32 PM BST
A key member of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s new government was forced to resign after security footage emerged of him in the presidential palace during the far-right attack on Brazil’s democratic institutions on January 8.
After his election last year, President Lula appointed retired Army General Gonçalves Dias to head Brazil’s Office of Institutional Security (GSI), which advises the president on defense and security matters and is responsible for presidential security.
However, on Wednesday afternoon, less than four months after the left-wing veteran took power, Dias was ousted from his job after a TV station aired leaked CCTV images showing him roaming the corridors of Brasília’s Planalto Palace as a radical supporter of the former President Jair Bolsonaro rampaged through this building, the Supreme Court and Congress.
The 73-year-old minister, who provided security for Lula both during his 2003-2010 presidency and during last year’s tumultuous election campaign, tried to explain the footage in an interview with broadcaster GloboNews.
“I entered the palace after the palace came [already] was stormed and I was removing people from the third and fourth floors so they could be arrested on the second,” claimed the general, a Harley-Davidson enthusiast best known by the nickname “G Dias.”
Lula and Dias are reported to have a long-standing and trusting relationship, and there has been no indication that Dias was involved in planning or even facilitating the chaos in Brasília.
Still, his statements seemed to be breaking little ice with senior members of Lula’s government, who have described the Jan. 8 uprising as a botched coup attempt aimed at reinstating Bolsonaro as president.
Alongside images of Gen Dias, the leaked footage included scenes showing GSI agents greeting the pro-Bolsonaro extremists and serving them water as they carried out their attack.
Hours after the leaked footage was broadcast by CNN Brasil, Lula reportedly summoned several senior ministers, including Dias, to a meeting where his fate was sealed.
In a statement, the Brazilian President’s communications secretariat, Secom, said there will be “no impunity for those involved in the January 8 criminal acts.”
Secom claimed that government agencies, including GSI, contained remnants of the previous government at the time of the “terrorist” attacks, which were subsequently removed from their posts. Investigators investigating the Jan. 8 events have already interviewed more than 80 military officials, including GSI agents, she added.
Lula’s Labor Party (PT) leader Gleisi Hoffman claimed on Twitter that the GSI agents filmed “collaborating” with the mob invading the presidential palace were a holdover from the Bolsonaro era, when they under whose boss General Augusto Heleno had worked.
Heleno, the 75-year-old hawkish former head of Brazil’s army in the Amazon, was one of the most radical and sharp-tongued members of Bolsonaro’s 2019-22 government.
During Brazil’s two-decade dictatorship, Heleno was an advisor to Sylvio Frota, a fiercely anti-Communist army general who played a key role in the 1964 military coup that ousted leftist President João Goulart.
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