8 January Brasília attacks
On 8 January 2023, following the defeat of then-president Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 Brazilian general election and the inauguration of his successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a mob of Bolsonaro's supporters attacked Brazil's federal government buildings in the capital, Brasília. The mob invaded and caused deliberate damage to the Supreme Federal Court, the National Congress Palace and the Planalto Presidential Palace in the Praça dos Três Poderes, seeking to violently overthrow the democratically elected president Lula, who had been inaugurated on 1 January. Many rioters said their purpose was to spur military leaders to launch a "military intervention" and disrupt the democratic transition of power. The event is sometimes called the Bolsonarist uprising.
At the time of the riots, neither Lula nor Bolsonaro were in Brasília: Lula was in Araraquara, a city in the countryside of São Paulo, with mayor Edinho Silva and ministers Luiz Marinho, Jader Barbalho Filho and Waldez Góes, surveying the city after heavy rains in the municipality; Bolsonaro was in Orlando, Florida, where he had been since the last days of 2022, even before the end of his term.
The attack occurred a week after Lula's inauguration and followed several weeks of unrest from Bolsonaro's supporters. It took more than five hours for the Brazilian security forces to clear all three buildings of the rioters, which happened at 21:00 BRT. The storming of the government buildings drew swift condemnation from governments around the world.
In response to the attack, at 18:00 BRT, Lula announced that he had signed a decree authorising a federal state of emergency in the Federal District through the end of January 2023. Congress was not in session at the time of the attacks, but it swiftly ratified the declaration by 10 January.
Background
During Bolsonaro's tenure as president of Brazil, his allies and supporters floated the idea of an assault like the United States Capitol attack of 6 January 2021 in the event he lost his re-election bid. Bolsonaro supporters alleged that the 2022 Brazilian general election suffered from widespread electoral fraud that caused Bolsonaro's loss. They claimed electronic voting machine malfunctions and deemed some voting patterns suspicious, and mistrusted election officials. The military helped oversee the election and found no signs of fraud. Supporters of Bolsonaro used social media to spread misinformation about supposed electoral fraud, further motivating the protesters. Supporters of Bolsonaro were also inspired by other international events in 2022 that bolstered the far-right such as the Canada convoy protests, the elections of Bongbong Marcos in the Philippines, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy.Some military reservists voiced support for a truckers' strike before the second round of elections, including Colonel Marcos Koury, who, on, published a video encouraging a truckers' general strike before the second round. Koury's video about the shutdowns was shared in several Pro-Bolsonaro groups on WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, and other social media websites, and, days later, members of these same groups started defending roadblocks after the elections. Calls for strikes were also made on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram.
Trucker protests lost strength on 3 November 2022, and Bolsonaro supporters began to gather in the vicinity of Brazilian Armed Forces facilities. Demonstrations took place at military installations in the cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Florianópolis, Recife, Salvador, and other cities and regions. In Brasília, a group had camped in front of the, demanding that the Armed Forces carry out a military coup; in January, Lula's government attempted to remove these protesters and, when this failed, ordered reinforced security. That week, the minister of justice also reiterated that the camps would be dismantled.
File:Bolsominions em Ilhéus 17.jpg|thumb|Protest camp in front of the Brazilian Army's barracks in Ilhéus, Bahia
The electoral victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was officially ratified by the Superior Electoral Court on 12 December 2022. Militant far-right Bolsonaro supporters stormed the Federal Police headquarters in Brasília and torched vehicles on the street after one of the protesters was arrested for inciting violence to prevent Lula's swearing-in. The police used stun grenades and tear gas to disperse them. A bombing attempt near Brasília International Airport was prevented by the police on 23 December; the suspect was arrested a day later. According to his testimony, he was motivated by Bolsonaro casting doubts on the integrity of the election process in the past. Other attempted attacks were carried out by Bolsonaro supporters after the election and during the beginning of Lula's government, including the case of a man who was arrested while attempting to enter the ministries' esplanade carrying a knife and an explosive device during Lula's inauguration.
Planning, inciting and financing
On 2 January 2023, former Bolsonaro minister Anderson Torres was appointed chief security officer of the Federal District by the reelected governor Ibaneis Rocha. The next day, Torres changed the command of the intelligence and special operations team of the department, including the undersecretary of the first Intelligence George Estefani and Chief of the Federal Police Milton Rodrigues. Those who were dismissed had been monitoring the protests and had understanding of terrorism and experience in crisis management. Torres then left Brazil on the night of 6 January for Orlando, Florida, arriving 7 January, just hours before the attacks and one week after Bolsonaro's own arrival in Orlando.Reports of a planned attack were already circulating in the first week of 2023, with audios leaked from several WhatsApp and Telegram groups showing intent by pro-Bolsonaro groups to organise a "massive protest" in Brasília, provoke violent actions by the crowd, circumvent police action, and possibly incite a military coup d'etat. Several groups and communities from throughout the country arranged for transport by bus to Brasília to participate in the demonstrations. Many social media websites did not moderate misleading claims about the election, meaning that people who used these sites to find information about the election were presented with these misleading claims. Before the attack, plans for protests in Brasília were referred to as "Selma's Party", a code phrase used on social media to discuss plans without arousing suspicion. Variants on the phrase were used to discuss planned riots in other cities.
Members of the federal cabinet were aware of the rioters' plans, but were assured by Rocha and Torres that the situation was under control. The district government on 6 January planned to prevent the rioters from reaching the National Congress, and had also closed access to its esplanade. However, Rocha changed the agreed-upon plans shortly before the protest and opened the esplanade to protesters. As a result, the security contingent was easily overwhelmed. The plan had called for the deployment of more than 1,300 officers from the Civil and Military Police, as well as about 200 officers of the National Public Security Force, but the actual number was far lower, which Rocha blamed on the public security secretary of Brasília, Anderson Torres. Justice Minister Flávio Dino later said that Anderson Torres had rejected the deployment of the National Public Security Force and did not accept the plan that called for deployment of reinforcements before the protest. O Estado de S. Paulo reported that the Planalto Military Command rejected the need for reinforcements at the presidential palace.
Anonymous government officials told The Washington Post that the buses that transported Bolsonaro supporters to Brasília had been paid for by donors from ten states, including some involved in agribusiness. Minister of Justice Flávio Dino stated that up to that point it had not been possible to "clearly distinguish" those responsible for financing the buses. He added: "What you can definitely say is that there was funding." Dino later reiterated that the donors were from the agribusiness sector and engaged in illegal activities.
According to the police, the rioters were prepared and appeared to know the location of key infrastructure such as fire hydrants, according to Alan Diego dos Santos Rodrigues, who was arrested for the attempted bombing at the Brasília International Airport. Many members of the military, both reserve and on-duty, took part in identifying and mapping the buildings, especially the Congress building. The group had allegedly been in Brasília since December, when they were at the protest camp in front of Army Headquarters. The group, called "the red berets", had been identified by the Brazilian Intelligence Agency as a "highly extremist, violent and anti democratic" group with the capability, ways and motivation to "gravely compromise the democratic state of law" and "plan, execute and incite violent attacks against authorities", including then president-elect Lula; most of the highly decentralised group were members of military paratrooper divisions and while they shared similar beliefs had no known leadership. The group was described as acting like mercenaries, paid for "services" such as making and delivering explosive devices to the airport in Brasília and mapping the installations of the National Congress and Supreme Federal Court buildings, as well as energy infrastructure in Brasília, possibly with the intention of carrying out terrorist attacks or assassinations against Lula and minister Alexandre de Moraes.
Other people involved in planning and executing the attack, such as Symon Albino, Diego Dias Ventura and Ana Priscila Azevedo, are suspected of inciting the attacks and paying for the buses that took protesters to Brasília. Albino and Azevedo made videos and posted on Telegram channels before the attack asking members to prepare and "not let communism take power", "collapse the system" and "take power by force". In addition they were allegedly close to the "red berets" and met with them before the attack. Azevedo was the target of an operation by the Federal Police ordered by Alexandre de Moraes, and is preemptively under arrest after she shared videos of herself during the attack on the National Congress and the Federal Supreme Court, and Albino was arrested by the Federal Police in a similar operation. Army reservist Marcelo Soares Correa, appointed as the leader of the "red berets" group and linked to many of the group's activities, has not been found. He was candidate for federal deputy for the Brazilian Woman's Party in 2022, and had been detained in 2016 for invading the National Congress during a protest asking for military intervention. He also allegedly took part in the march from army headquarters to the Praça dos Três Poderes, and was reportedly heard saying that "pacifism has ended", which meant, according to police, that he intended to invade the federal buildings.