Brazil: Prosecutors charge 39 in pro-Bolsonaro riots in Brasilia

The office of Brazil's prosecutor general on Tuesday presented its first charges against thousands of supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro for storming the capital city of Brasilia on January 8, calling for a military coup to oust current president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The prosecutors, who charged 39 supporters, requested they should be imprisoned as a preventive measure and that $7.7 million (40 million reais) of their assets be frozen to help cover damages, a report by news agency Associated Press said on Tuesday (January 17).

As per a statement on Monday, the prosecutor general's office said these 39 were charged with armed criminal association, a violent attempt to subvert the democratic state of law, staging a coup and damage to public property. Their identities have not been released yet, the report added.

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Right after the January 8 riots, over 2,000 Bolsonaro supporters were arrested immediately. Of these, 300 were detained at the crime scene. At present, some 1,400 supporters remain in custody, a report by news agency AFP said. More than 600 were already released pending investigation. These included mainly elderly people, pregnant women and mothers with small children, the report added.

The charges against the supporters come just days after Anderson Torres, the former justice minister in Bolsonaro's cabinet was arrested on January 14 over the riots. Torres was arrested when he arrived in Brasilia from the United States- where he and Bolsonaro were at the time of the riots.

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Meanwhile, Bolsonaro, who remains in the United States, will be included in an investigation into the origin of the January 8 riots. Justice Alexandre de Moraes granted a request from the office of the prosecutor general (PGR)to include the former president in the wider probe, citing a video he posted on Facebook two days after the riots. The video, posted two days after the riots questioned the regularity of last year's presidential elections. The PGR pointed out that even though the video was posted after the violence, it might serve as "a probative connection" that justified "a global investigation of the acts performed before and after January 8, 2023, by the defendant."

Bolsonaro's defence denied any involvement by him in the riots. News agency AFP earlier reported that as per a note issued by Bolsonaro's office, the former president never had any relationship or participation in these movements, blaming the violence on infiltrators.

(With inputs from agencies)

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