Brazil’s Supreme Court agreed to open an investiga-tion against former president Jair Bolsonaro for allegedly encouraging anti-democratic protests that ended in the storming of government buildings by his supporters in Brasilia.
“Public figures who continue to cowardly con-spire against democracy trying to establish a state of exception will be held accountable,” said Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who agreed to the request by federal prosecutors to launch the probe.
Bolsonaro, who is currently in the United States, will be investigated by prosecutors for possible “instigation and intellectual authorship of the anti-democratic acts that resulted in vandalism and vio-lence in Brasilia last Sunday,” the top public prose-cutor’s office said in a statement.
The Supreme Court had already ordered the ar-rest of Bolsonaro’s former justice minister, Anderson Torres, for allowing the protests to take place in the Brazilian capital after he assumed responsibility for Brasilia’s public security.
Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters vandalised the Supreme Court, Congress and presidential palace last weekend, seeking to provoke chaos and a mili-tary coup that would oust President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and restore the far-right leader to power
Having lost Brazil’s October election to Lula, Bolsonaro left Brazil for the United States on the eve of the end of his term, avoiding passing the presidential sash to his leftist rival at his inauguration.—APP
