Brasilia, Brazil.- Brazilian police said they carried out raids across the country and arrested at least two people on Thursday as part of investigations into an alleged coup attempt during riots by supporters of the defeated far-right President Jair. Bolsonaro.
Authorities have been cracking down on a small but committed minority of Bolsonaro supporters who refuse to acknowledge the electoral victory of leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Federal police were serving 32 search and seizure warrants in eight states under Supreme Court orders. A police source said that two people had been arrested, one in Brasilia and the other in Rio de Janeiro.
“The crimes investigated are qualified damage, arson, criminal association, violent abolition of the rule of law and coup d’état, whose combined maximum sentences amount to 34 years in prison,” the federal police said in a statement.
Tension remains high in Brazil after the most tense elections in recent years.
On December 24, the Brasilia Police said they had thwarted a bomb attack. A Bolsonaro supporter, linked to a group of opponents camped in front of the Army headquarters, confessed to having made the device to provoke a military intervention.
Thursday’s operation was related to the riots on December 12, the day Lula’s victory was certified, when some supporters of the camp attacked the federal police headquarters and set fire to cars and buses in Brasilia after the arrest of a leader. indigenous probolsonaro
Bolsonaristas maintain protests
Hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters continued to mobilize this Thursday in front of the Army headquarters in Brasilia, demanding a military intervention to prevent Lula’s return to power next Sunday.
“Bolsonaro, take action on the Armed Forces against electoral fraud,” said one of the posters that they put up next to the tents where they have been camping since October 30, dissatisfied with the defeat of the far-right president at the polls.
The number of his supporters who remain mobilized in front of the Army headquarters in the capital has gradually decreased in recent weeks, an AFP photographer confirmed.
Lula, 77, will come to power for the third time, after having ruled Brazil between 2003 and 2010.
