Brazilian police on Tuesday released nearly 600 people arrested during the assault on official buildings in Brasilia and are preparing to launch charges once morest those who organized and financed the insurgency that sowed chaos in the capital.
Of some 1,500 supporters of far-right ex-President Jair Bolsonaro arrested following Sunday’s incidents, 527 suspects have been transferred to a local jail, authorities said.
These bolsonarists refuse to recognize the election of left-wing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, invested on January 1.
Throughout Tuesday, individuals who had been confined to a gymnasium at the National Academy of Federal Police were brought by coaches to a bus station from where they were able to return home, journalists found. from AFP.
In one of the coaches, the passengers shouted “Victory is ours!”
Some have stretched their arms outside the windows, clenching their fists or making the V for victory.
– “Humiliating” –
The Federal Police announced in a statement that 599 people had been released “for humanitarian reasons”, including the elderly, people with health problems or mothers with young children.
Not all the coaches leaving the Federal Police Academy went to the bus station. Some have taken those arrested to a police station, for them to be transferred to the Papuda prison complex, where 527 suspects have been imprisoned.
“The federal police training school has been turned into a Nazi concentration camp. It’s humiliating to see how good people like us have been treated,” said one of the trainees as he got out of a bus at the bus station. freed bolsonarists, Agostinho Ribeiro, who attributes the depredations to “infiltrated” left-wing militants.
A woman who wished to remain anonymous gave a completely different version. “Everyone was treated well. No one died,” she said.
The Federal Police has denied the information that an elderly person arrested died Monday in his academy.
The invasion of the Presidential Palace, Congress and the Supreme Court in Brasilia, reminiscent of the assault on the Capitol in Washington two years ago, caused considerable material damage, in particular to works of art of a priceless.
– “Firmness” –
On Tuesday, Justice Minister Flavio Dino said around 50 new arrest warrants would be issued soon.
“Some will target people who took part in the ransacking of places of power and were not arrested in flagrante delicto. Others will target people who were not in Brasilia (…), but are suspected of be involved in the organization or the financing” of the riots, explained the minister during an interview with the Globonews chain.
Influencers have created an account on Instagram allowing Internet users to denounce users who posted selfies on the network during the riots. This account was followed by more than a million subscribers by the end of the day on Tuesday.
“We must firmly fight terrorism, these putschists who want to establish an exceptional regime,” Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said on Tuesday during an official ceremony in Brasilia.
“They have no interest in believing that the institutions will show signs of weakness, the prison will not be a summer camp,” he insisted.
According to the Brazilian press, this magistrate on Tuesday ordered the arrest of the security secretary of the federal district of Brasilia, Anderson Torres, former justice minister of Jair Bolsonaro.
Mr. Torres was in the United States on Sunday, like the ex-president, currently hospitalized in Florida for an intestinal problem. He had left Brazil two days before Lula’s inauguration, refusing to give him the presidential sash.
Judge Moraes had already dismissed from his post on Sunday evening the governor of the district of Brasilia, Ibaneis Rocha, who had apologized to President Lula for “the flaws” in security that allowed the looting.
Videos on social media showed police filming the assaults of the horde of rioters rather than intervening.
The President of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, for his part showed himself in favor of the opening of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry to shed full light on “violations of the rule of law” represented by the riots. in Brasília.
