Anderson Torres, former justice minister of Jair Bolsonaro in charge of public security in Brasilia during the ransacking of the headquarters of Congress and other places of power by supporters of the ex-president six days ago, was arrested on Saturday on counts of “omission” and “connivance”.
Anderson Torres returned to Brazil on Saturday following returning from vacation in Florida, where Jair Bolsonaro left to settle at the end of December, two days before the inauguration of his successor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, whose presidential victory he refuses to recognize of October. The Brazilian Supreme Federal Court decided on Friday to open an investigation into the far-right ex-president, suspected of being “an instigator and inspirer of anti-democratic acts that culminated in acts of vandalism and violence in Brasilia last Sunday”the attorney general’s office said in a statement.
“Public figures who continue to cowardly conspire once morest democracy by trying to establish a state of emergency must be held to account”warned Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who oversees the investigations into the disturbances perpetrated in the capital by thousands of “bolsonarists” on January 8.
Alexandre de Moraes had ordered the arrest of former minister Anderson Torres on Thursday. The director general of the federal police, Andrei Rodrigues, estimated that “the various omissions, presumably intentional, of these public security officials of the Federal District have contributed to the commission of terrorist acts”.
