Top Brazil court greenlights probe of Bolsonaro for Brasilia rampage

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice has authorised including former president Jair Bolsonaro in its investigation of who incited the January 8 riot in the nation's capital, as part of a broader crackdown to hold responsible parties to account.

According to the text of his ruling on Friday, Justice Alexandre de Moraes granted the request from the prosecutor-general's office, which cited a video Bolsonaro posted on Facebook two days after the riot. 

The video claimed Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wasn't voted into office, but rather was chosen by the Supreme Court and Brazil's electoral authority.

Prosecutors in the recently formed group to combat anti-democratic acts argued earlier on Friday that, although Bolsonaro posted the video after the riot, its content was sufficient to justify investigating his conduct beforehand. Bolsonaro deleted it the morning after he first posted it.

Otherwise, Bolsonaro has refrained from commenting on the election since his October 30 defeat. He repeatedly stoked doubt about the reliability of the electronic voting system in the run-up to the vote, filed a request afterward to annul millions of ballots cast using the machines and never conceded.

He has taken up residence in an Orlando suburb since leaving Brazil in late December and skipping the January 1 swearing-in of his leftist successor, and some Democratic lawmakers have urged President Joe Biden to cancel his visa.

Following the justice's decision late on Friday, neither Bolsonaro nor any of his three lawmaker sons had issued comment on social media.

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Charges against Bolsonaro

Bolsonaro will be investigated for possible "instigation and intellectual authorship of the anti-democratic acts that resulted in vandalism and violence in Brasilia last Sunday."

The Supreme Court had already ordered the arrest of his 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 military coup that would oust Lula and restore the far-right leader to power.

Torres, who is in Florida, has said he plans to return to Brazil to turn himself in, while Bolsonaro, who is also in Florida, has said he will bring forward his return to the country.

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Justice Minister Flavio Dino told a news conference he would wait until next week to re-evaluate Torres' case, indicating that an effort to request his extradition could happen if the former minister did not turn himself in.

On Thursday, police found a draft decree in Torres' house that appeared to be a proposal to interfere in the result of the October election that Bolsonaro lost.

Torres claimed the document was among others in a stack that was being thrown out. He said they were "leaked" to Folha de S.Paulo newspaper in his absence to create a "false narrative."

The political party Bolsonaro belongs to, the right-wing Liberal Party (PL), meanwhile, decided to beef up its team of lawyers in preparation for the defence of the former president, a party official told the Reuters news agency.

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