The Brazil police said they had apprehended at least four persons and carried out countrywide raids on Thursday enquiring into an alleged coup attempt during scuffle by supporters of defeated far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazilian authorities, guided by the Supreme Court, have been clamping down on a limited but determined minority of Bolsonaro supporters who denied to accept leftist President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s election victory and are asking for a military coup.
Bolsonaro, who has still not conceded defeat, has expressed baseless claims that Brazil’s electoral system has no credibility.
Thursday’s investigation came just days before Lula’s inauguration on Sunday, and less than a week after police in Brasilia said they had hindered a bomb plot masterminded by alleged Bolsonaro allies.
The raids propelled from a violent protest on December 12, the day Lula’s victory was confirmed, when people opposing election protesting outside army headquarters in Brasilia attacked the federal police HQ and set cars and buses on fire after the arrest of a pro-Bolsonaro native leader.
The federal police said on Thursday they were giving 32 search and arrest warrants in eight states as per Supreme Court orders.
The crimes included were “qualified damage, arson, criminal association, violent abolition of the rule of law and coup d’état, whose maximum combined penalties amount to 34 years in prison,” the police said in a statement.
Cleo Mazzotti, who heads the federal police’s organized crime division, said, “Four people had been apprehended by mid-morning, with more detentions expected as police searched for seven other suspects.”
According to Mazzotti, two arrest warrants were executed in the Brazilian cities of Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia for the state of Rondonia in the northwest.
Speaking at the introduction of his new ministers, Lula urged the populace to ignore the “noise” that would follow the election.
The winner has the right to host a sizable, well-attended party, and those who lost the election should keep quiet, he said.
The operation was applauded by the incoming justice minister Flavio Dino, who stated that its goal was to defend the rule of law by “protecting life and property.”
