Former President of the Republic Jair Bolsonaro was informed that Army officials would make public a letter addressed to the then commander of the Force, General Marco Antônio Freire Gomes, as a way of pressuring the military to join an attempted coup d’état, following the 2022 elections.
According to the Federal Police (PF), a group of military personnel dissatisfied with the victory of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, decided to write and publicize the document, called Letter to the Commander of the Army of Senior Active Officers of the Brazilian Army, as part of a strategy to “cause an institutional rupture” and, thus, “keep then-president Jair Bolsonaro in power”.
Also according to the PF, the analysis of phones later seized from lieutenant colonels Sergio Ricardo Cavaliere de Medeiros; Ronald Ferreira de Araújo Júnior and Mauro Cid, then President Bolsonaro’s aide-de-camp, allowed investigators to “identify the entire dynamics of the creation and dissemination” of the document, “conceived and improved during the last week of November 2022”.
“The exchanges of messages show that the creation and dissemination of the letter with coup content, signed by Army officers, was known and approved by the then President of the Republic, being a strategy to incite the military and pressure the Army Command to adhere to the institutional rupture”, conclude the researchers in the report that the PF delivered to the Federal Supreme Court (STF) at the indict 37 peopleincluding Bolsonaro.
In the document, investigators reproduce messages that Cavaliere and Cid exchanged through an application. According to the PF, at the time, those investigated were adjusting the content and way of publicizing the letter. Cavaliere asks Cid: “[O] 01 know this?”. And the adjutant responds: “You know…”. Later, when questioned by federal police, Cavaliere confirmed that the term 01 was a reference to Bolsonaro. And that, when asking if he was aware of “this”, he was referring to the letter.
“The declarant [Cavaliere] he said he wanted to know if JAIR BOLSONARO was aware of the Open Letter”, conclude the investigators in the report already forwarded to the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), the body responsible for filing a complaint against the accused; request that the investigation be closed or that the investigation be deepened.
At the same time, after carrying out an internal investigation that identified “indications of military crime”, the Army indictedat the beginning of this month, three military personnel named as the main authors of the letter: Colonel Anderson Lima de Moura, active, and Colonels Carlos Giovani Delevati Pasini and José Otávio Machado Rezo, both retired. The first two are among the 37 indicted by the PF this week.
THE Brazil Agency seeks contact with the defense of those mentioned and is open to including their position in the text. On Monday (25), at a press conference, Bolsonaro declared that he “never discussed a coup with anyone.” According to the former president, all measures taken during his government were carried out “within the four lines of the Constitution”.
