Brazil came within a whisker of a far-right military coup and the assassination of a supreme court judge just days before President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power in January 2023, a federal police report has claimed.
The report about the alleged plot to help the rightwing populist Jair Bolsonaro cling to power was made public on Tuesday, and paints a chilling portrait of how close one of the world’s largest democracies came to being plunged back into authoritarian rule.
The 884-page document describes a complex, three-year conspiracy that investigators believe was designed to pave the way for a military power grab by using social media to disseminate false claims of electoral fraud that plotters hoped would justify such an intervention in the public eye.
Police claim that plot was supposed to reach “its zenith” on 15 December 2022 – a fortnight before Lula was due to be sworn in after narrowly beating Bolsonaro in October’s presidential election.
Conspirators, including several senior military figures, allegedly hoped that on that day Bolsonaro would sign a “coup decree” which would in effect allow a military takeover.
On 16 December 2022, “after the consummation of the coup d’état”, the report claims two close Bolsonaro allies – the former defence minister Gen Walter Braga Netto and the former minister of institutional security Gen Augusto Heleno – were to be placed in charge of a “crisis management” cabinet.
The federal police report – which the Guardian has reviewed – claims the only reason Bolsonaro did not sign that decree blocking the transfer of power was because the plotters had failed to secure sufficient support from Brazil’s military top brass.
“The evidence [gathered] … shows that the commander of the navy, Adm Almir Garnier [Santos], and the defence minister, [Gen] Paulo Sérgio [Nogueira de Oliveira], adhered to the coup attempt. However, the [army] commander [Marco Antônio] Freire Gomes and [Carlos de Almeida] Baptista Júnior of the air force positioned themselves against any kind of measure that would cause an institutional rupture in the country,” the report alleges.
Federal police said the only thing that prevented the coup attempt taking place was “the unequivocal stance” of Freire Gomes, Baptista Junior and the majority of the army high command. It claimed those people “remained faithful to the values that govern the democratic rule of law state and did not cave in to coup-mongering pressure”.
Bolsonaro was last week formally accused of being one of 37 people involved in criminal conspiracy designed to obliterate Brazil’s democratic system through a rightwing coup d’état. He denied those accusations on Tuesday, calling them madness.
“I never discussed a coup with anyone,” he told reporters in the capital, Brasília. “If someone had come and talked to me about a coup, I would have asked them: ‘What about the day after? What would the world do?’”
However, the federal police report claimed: “The evidence obtained over the course of the investigation shows unequivocally that the then president Jair Messias Bolsonaro planned, took action and had direct and effective control of the executory acts carried out by the criminal organization that sought to execute a military coup and dismantle the rule of law, something that did not occur as a result of circumstances beyond his control.”
Gen Braga Netto last week denied a coup plot had been afoot, calling such claims “fanciful and absurd”. Gen Heleno has yet to comment on the police claims but last year publicly denied being involved in preparations for a coup.
Gen Nogueira de Oliveira and Adm Almir Garnier Santos have yet to publicly comment on the claims.
The police report indicates that schemers close to Bolsonaro had put in place contingency plans in case the alleged coup attempt failed. A laptop seized from Lt Col Mauro Cid, who was Bolsonaro’s aide-de-camp during his 2019-23 presidency, allegedly contained a PowerPoint presentation with details of a military-style escape plan for Bolsonaro “in case the attempted coup was thwarted”.
“The plan involves the use of weapons to ensure the ex-president’s escape,” the report adds of the alleged “exfiltration” plan.
The police inquiry also contains shocking details of how close plotters may have come to abducting or assassinating the supreme court judge Alexandre de Moraes.
On 15 December, as plotters unsuccessfully pushed for Bolsonaro to sign the decree authorizing a military intervention, the report claims that at least six members of a pro-Bolsonaro cell “positioned themselves in strategic points near the minister’s official residence and the supreme court to carry out the action”. However, at the last minute the “clandestine” mission to “neutralize” Moraes was aborted, police said, partly because of the army chief’s refusal to support the conspiracy.
Police said they had also discovered plans to murder Lula and his vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, in Lula’s case with poison or toxic chemicals. The report claimed Bolsonaro had “full knowledge” of the “operational planning” for such criminal acts.
How did it begin?
Brazil’s leftist president, João Goulart, was toppled in a coup in April 1964. General Humberto Castelo Branco became leader, political parties were banned, and the country was plunged into 21 years of military rule.
The repression intensified under Castelo Branco’s hardline successor, Artur da Costa e Silva, who took power in 1967. He was responsible for a notorious decree called AI-5 that gave him wide ranging dictatorial powers and kicked off the so-called “anos de chumbo” (years of lead), a bleak period of tyranny and violence which would last until 1974.
What happened during the dictatorship?
Supporters of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime - including Jair Bolsonaro - credit it with bringing security and stability to the South American country and masterminding a decade-long economic “miracle”.
It also pushed ahead with several pharaonic infrastructure projects including the still unfinished Trans-Amazonian highway and the eight-mile bridge across Rio’s Guanabara bay.
But the regime, while less notoriously violent than those in Argentina and Chile, was also responsible for murdering or killing hundreds of its opponents and imprisoning thousands more. Among those jailed and tortured were Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, then a leftwing rebel.
It was also a period of severe censorship. Some of Brazil’s best-loved musicians - including Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso - went into exile in Europe, writing songs about their enforced departures.
How did it end?
Political exiles began returning to Brazil in 1979 after an amnesty law was passed that began to pave the way for the return of democracy.
But the pro-democracy “Diretas Já” (Direct elections now!) movement only hit its stride in 1984 with a series of vast and historic street rallies in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte.
Civilian rule returned the following year and a new constitution was introduced in 1988. The following year Brazil held its first direct presidential election in nearly three decades.
This week’s revelations have horrified and shocked many citizens in a country which only emerged from 21 years of military dictatorship in 1985. Several of those accused of being part of the 2022 pro-Bolsonaro coup plot were part of that 1964-85 regime. During the 1970s, Gen Heleno was an aide to Gen Sylvio Frota, a notoriously hardline member of the military regime who was involved in the 1964 coup that overthrew Brazil’s leftwing president João Goulart.
“How safe is our democracy?” asked the headline of an opinion article in one of Brazil’s largest newspapers, the Folha de São Paulo, on Tuesday evening.
