Brazilians take to the streets to celebrate Bolsonaro conviction for plotting a coup
Thousands of Brazilians have taken to the streets to rejoice at Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction for plotting a coup, as progressive politicians celebrated the historic move and rightwing figures linked to Donald Trump responded with anger and threats.
Chile’s leftwing president, Gabriel Boric, led regional congratulations of the decision to jail Bolsonaro for 27 years for leading a criminal organisation that sought to seize power after the far-right populist lost the 2022 election.
“My respect to Brazilian democracy which fended off a coup attempt and today judges and convicts those responsible for it. They tried to destroy [democracy] and today it emerges strengthened,” Boric tweeted, adding: “Democracy always!”
Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, said: “All putschists must be convicted. Those are the rules of democracy.”
In Latin America, 11 September is a date deeply associated with authoritarianism and violence: it was on this day in 1973 that Gen Augusto Pinochet launched a US-backed coup in Chile that ushered in 17 years of brutal military rule during which thousands were killed or forcibly disappeared.
But on Thursday jubilant crowds in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, celebrated how Bolsonaro’s conviction had given new meaning to the notorious date. [Continue reading…]
The conspirators used codenames to conceal their identities as they prepared for their mission: to plunge Brazil into chaos by assassinating a celebrity supreme court judge called Alexandre de Moraes.
On an encrypted messaging group, one plotter used the alias Brazil, another Japan and a third Austria.
“Each of them had the name of a team,” Moraes said this week as he denounced the alleged plot to murder him as part of an attempt to destroy South America’s largest democracy.
The group of football-loving would-be assassins abandoned their task at the last minute.
“I’m close to the position. Are you going to cancel the game?” the person codenamed Austria asked their associates on their Signal group at just before 9pm on 15 December 2022, as he lurked near Moraes’s home in Brazil’s capital, Brasília.
“Abort,” replied “Germany”, according to a federal police report.
The cinematic plot, nicknamed Operation Copa 2022 (Operation World Cup 2022) and involving at least six special forces troops, was at the heart of this week’s historic trial of Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro. [Continue reading…]