Senator Marcos do Val arrived at this place in Brasilia in his elegant official car this sunny Tuesday, because several of his constituents, who were arrested after last Sunday’s attack on Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court, wrote to him on Instagram and asked for help. On the other side of the checkpoint, in the gym of the National Academy of the Federal Police, around 1,500 Bolsonaristas are waiting for the judicial authorities to decide what to do with them. Meanwhile, the 51-year-old senator, right-wing extremist, former soldier and instructor of elite Swat-type police units, speaks to the press about how the invasion that shook the foundations of Brazilian democracy unfolded this Sunday. Provides details of the investigation.
His honor, which rejects the violence used by the radicals, attributes the virulent large-scale attack to the herd effect. He says the attack was “100 percent planned” by “a terrorist cell,” a trained and paid far-right group that he calculated would consist of “20 or 30 percent of those involved.” The cell led the invasion while the rest, those on the right, filmed the attack on their cellphones. Now the police officers follow these pictures on social networks in order to identify them.
On the same night as the attack, 260 coup plotters were arrested red-handed in the Plaza de los Tres Poderes, where two days later cleaners are still collecting and cleaning glass while their bosses assess the damage. Four of those arrested are in pre-trial detention (unusual in this country for white suspects, like most of those filmed during the invasion). The prosecutor demanded such forceful measures “mainly because of the terror imposed on society, because of contempt for the leadership of the republic powers and because of the symbolism of these institutions [atacadas] for the democratic regime.
Senator Marcos do Val while addressing the press on January 10. AMANDA PEROBELLI (Portal)
Around 1,200 people were arrested on Monday during the evacuation of the camp set up outside the gates of the army headquarters after the electoral defeat of 67-year-old right-wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro. It is another building like the ones attacked, designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer, who co-born with the urban planner Lucio Costa Brasilia. In the capital one cannot remember a police operation of this magnitude. They are accused of crimes such as terrorism or the violent abolition of the rule of law.
Senator Do Val illustrated the revelations about the attack by describing some scenes that he believes emerge from the investigation: “One of them already announced in the Senate: ‘I proclaim myself President of the Republic.’ And this madman gave an order: “You can go and arrest Judge Alexandre de Moraes”, in a nod to the Supreme Court judge who is the main scourge of anti-democratic Bolsonarianism, the object of the wrath of supporters of the ex-president ultra-right his successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 77.
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Moraes has ordered the arrest of DF Public Safety Secretary Anderson Torres, who was fired the same Sunday afternoon and is in Florida with Bolsonaro, whose minister he was. And the commander who led the operation of the military police that day has already been arrested. Incidentally, Bolsonaro has announced that he will bring his return to Brazil forward.
Senator Do Val adds that the self-proclaimed president also called to say, “Mission accomplished. The pix of what was ordered”. Pix is an instant payment system, suggesting that this phrase could be a call to collect the agreed-upon payment for the assault.
A full bus left the police academy late Tuesday morning. On board women with children, the elderly and the sick. Many are still wearing the yellow shirts and flags with which they were arrested during the eviction of the coup camp in Brasilia on Monday; others were also dismantled. During those 24 hours of detention, they were interrogated and their phones checked. They self-released videos showing the – in their view abject, criminal, not how they define themselves, bourgeois – conditions in which they were held. Finally, about 600 prisoners are taken to the bus station. According to the federal police, they are released “for humanitarian reasons”.
Elderly male and female Bolsonaro supporters who have been released step out of the truck that was transporting them from the National Academy of Federal Police in Brasilia on January 10. AMANDA PEROBELLI (Portal)
The women without children and the rest of the men are transferred to the women’s prison and the men’s prison. Their lawyers have already reassured them, saying that awaiting the first hearing they will go to the pre-trial wings, not the dreaded cells with criminals or the maximum security prison in Brasilia, where the leaders of the First Commando are held. de la Capital, (PCC), the most powerful criminal group in Latin America.
The invaders took advantage of the fact that the heart of Brazilian democracy had been deserted since Sunday, and that the president, parliamentarians and judges were far away, to carry out an attack announced months ago, when nobody expected it. The new president and his government completed a week in office on Sunday.
Senator Do Val, a conservative representing the small state of Espirito Santo, said the information he had access to from House of Lords police invited him to come up with a well-structured, phased plan: First, the attackers used fire extinguishers dust to obstruct agents’ vision; then they used fire hoses to blunt the effects of the tear gas and slingshots shot lead bullets at glass, eliciting euphoria from the rest of those present. “That’s when the herd effect started,” explains this retired soldier, who claims to have briefed FBI agents, Navy SEALs and even the Vatican gendarmerie.
This politician suspects that the attackers had accomplices among people who know the building because they knew where to enter and where the fire extinguishers were. The parliamentarian, who likes to answer journalists, is just halfway through his eight-year term.
On January 9, members of the army dismantled the camp left by supporters of Jair Bolsonaro in Brasilia. AMANDA PEROBELLI (Portal)
Among the lawyers who wanted to see the Bolsonaristas being held by the police in the gym, lawyer Nalva Brito arrives in a hurry to serve 120 clients. Bolsonarians who came to the capital from Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Goiás, who they say are “subjugated, mistreated, humiliated, in a situation that would even justify a complaint to the UN,” she says. “The human rights activists who always show up when a criminal is arrested haven’t even shown up here. And they are all innocent,” he emphasizes.
The lawyer is scathing about the work of Judge Moraes, a great bulwark of democracy or inquisitor of Bolsonarianism, depending on what Brazil is asking. “Moraes is reinventing our laws and our constitution… A person who says in a public square that they don’t like the Supreme Court is accused of a terrorist crime,” Brito insists, ignoring what began as a footpath through Brazil’s institutional heart led to a violent mob that posed the greatest threat to Brazilian democracy since the end of the dictatorship.
Somewhat stunned, relatives and friends also came to the police academy to get information about the detainees. Luisa Andreoli came with food and clean clothes. Two of her friends were arrested when they least expected it. They arrived in Brasilia on an 850-kilometer journey from Rio Claro, in the state of São Paulo, to take part in the invasion. They were about to start their journey home on Monday in a bus with 48 people when the police, who turned them away, intercepted them. “They took everyone’s cell phones. Nobody knows what they are accused of. They say they will take her to a women’s prison. It is not allowed! They are not criminals!” Andreoli lamented.
She is concerned about the conditions in which the detainees are found: “They slept on the floor, they threw a lot of good people there. It’s going to be a pressure cooker, soon people will lose their composure and who knows what’s going on,” he warned, as if two days earlier there hadn’t been a brutal attack that had been reported on the front pages of the world press.
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