SÃO PAULO (RNS) — A report released Nov. 26 by Brazil’s federal police details a conspiracy allegedly involving former President Jair Bolsonaro and 36 others to stage a coup to prevent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking office in 2023.
The list of 37 indicted individuals, which includes a Roman Catholic priest, was received with outrage by evangelical Christian supporters of the right-wing former president, who have called the police investigation an effort by Lula and members of Brazil’s Supreme Court to persecute conservatives in South America’s most populous nation.
According to the report, after Lula won the presidential election in October 2022, Bolsonaro and close members of his entourage, most of them high-ranking military officers, launched a secret operation with the goal of keeping him as president indefinitely.
Their smartphone messages, disclosed in the 884-page police report, suggest the plan was supported by broad segments of the armed forces, including generals and colonels who were allegedly waiting for Bolsonaro’s green light to take control of the government.
A parallel inquiry, which resulted in the detention of five people the previous week, asserted that the conspirators planned to kill Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes using explosives or poison. De Moraes headed th …