Brazilian police arrested a supporter of incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro who tried to use explosives to create “chaos” a week before President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office, local media reported on Sunday.
The man, identified as George Washington de Oliveira Sousa, was arrested on Saturday. He planted an explosive device in a tanker truck near the Brasilia airport. Lula’s inauguration ceremony is expected to take place in the Brazilian capital on January 1.
Its purpose, according to his statements to the police published in the local press, was to “trigger chaos” and “intervene the armed forces” to “prevent the establishment of communism in Brazil”.
It was the truck driver who alerted the police after finding the explosive device on Saturday morning.
Although there was an attempt to activate it, the device did not explode, Robson Candido, a senior police official in Brasilia, was quoted as quoted by news site G1 at a news conference.
“The serious events that took place yesterday in Brasilia demonstrate that the camps of the so-called ‘patriots’ have become incubators for terrorists,” tweeted Flavio Dino, appointed justice minister in the next Lula government.
The arrested clarified that the plan was devised with other Bolsonarians who demonstrated for days after the announcement of the outgoing president’s defeat in front of the army headquarters in Brasilia.
The idea was to place at least two explosive devices in strategic places, with the aim of obtaining the “declaration of a state of siege in the country” and, from there, “provoking the intervention of the armed forces”, he said Oliveira Sousa. police, according to the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro blocked roads and demonstrated in front of barracks across the country after Lula’s narrow victory in the October 30 runoff with 50.9% of the vote against 49.1%.
Months later, there are still pro-Bolsonaro demonstrations in front of some army barracks. In the apartment where Oliveira Sousa, a petrol station employee in Para (north), lived, the police found a large amount of weapons.
Oliveira Sousa said he was “inspired by President Bolsonaro’s words” to acquire the weapons, for an estimated value of 160,000 reais (about $31,100), Folha de S. Paulo details.
Mr Bolsonaro has said in public statements that “an armed people will never be enslaved”.
According to his confession, the prisoner intended to distribute the weapons to the people camped in front of the barracks.
Lula, 77, president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, will take power for the third time, during an impressive ceremony organized in the capital.
