MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolsonaro under investigation for incitement to Sunday's riots in Brasilia

Bolsonaro's allegations that the elections' results were fraudulent were unsupported, De Moraes stressed

At the request of Brazil's Attorney General's Office, Supreme Federal Court (STF) Justice Alexandre De Moraes has agreed to add former President Jair Bolsonaro to the items under probe for last Sunday's antidemocratic events in Brasilia, Agencia Brasil reported.

De Moraes acquiesced late on Friday night to the request filed by the Attorney General's Office (PGR) to include Bolsonaro in the investigation into the intellectual authorship of the anti-democratic acts carried out on Sunday resulting in the assault to the Planalto Palace, the STF, and the National Congress in Brasilia.

In his ruling, De Moraes understood that there was sufficient evidence to open the investigation against the former president.

“The statement of the former President of the Republic Jair Messias Bolsonaro revealed itself as one more of the occasions in which the then-president positioned himself in a way, in theory, criminal and threatening the institutions, especially the STF - imputing to its ministers the fraud of the elections to favor any candidate - and the TSE-, sustaining, without any evidence, that the result of the Elections was fraudulent,” De Moraes wrote.

The prosecutor's office argued that Bolsonaro would have made public incitement to crime when he published a video on social media on Jan. 10 questioning the regularity of the 2022 elections.

The magistrate also requested Meta, the company that manages Facebook, to preserve a video, which was deleted, and the provision of data on the scope of the post, authorship of the publication, number of shares, and comments. De Moraes is also closely scrutinizing through specialists in political communication the acts of the extremist pro-Bolsonaro movements.

“President Jair Bolsonaro has always repudiated all illegal and criminal acts and has always spoken publicly to be against such illicit conduct, just as he has always been a defender of the Constitution and democracy. Throughout his government, he has always acted within the four lines of the Constitution,” defense lawyer Frederick Wassef said in a statement.

(Source: Agencia Brasil)