Reuters image.
Rio de Janerio: A week after the leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in as President of Brazil, the supporters of previous President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the Brazil Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace on Sunday, reports Associated Press.
The latest update by Agence France-Presse suggested that police retook the mob-held capital and arrested hundreds of mobsters.
Supporters of far-right leader Bolsonaro- who refused to accept his defeat in the recent elections- bypassed the security barricades, climbed on roofs, smashed windows and invaded all three buildings located in Three Powers Square in the capital.
Some of the mob demanded a military intervention to oust Lula from the presidency and reinstate Bolsonaro.
Condemning the incident at a news conference in Sao Paulo, President Lula said that Bonsolaro endorsed the mob by the "fascist fanatics". He read a freshly signed decree for the federal government to take control of security in the federal district.
However, Bolsonaro has rejected Lula's allegations that the latter's accusations are baseless, reports Agence France-Presse. On Twitter, he wrote condemning "pillaging and invasions of public buildings", as AFP quoted him, but also defended "peaceful protests".
He said, "There is no precedent for what they did, and these people need to be punished."
The mobsters were wearing the green and yellow colours of the national flag and showed TV footage, which symbolizes Brazil's conservative movement adopted by Bolsonaro supporters.
Rioters vandalized the rooms inside Supreme Court, sprayed fire hoses inside the Congress building and ransacked offices at the presidential palace, breaking windows in all buildings.
Police fired tear gas to try to regain control of the buildings. At about 6:30 pm local time (4:30 pm EST), less than four hours after the storming, security forces were shown on television backing protesters away from the Supreme Court and marching them down a ramp to the presidential palace with their hands secured behind their backs.
But with the damage already done, many in Brazil were questioning how the police had ignored abundant warnings, were unprepared or were somehow complicit.
Lula said at his news conference there was "incompetence or bad faith? On the part of the police, and that they had been likewise complacent when Bolsonaro supporters rioted in the capital weeks ago. He promised those officers would be punished and expelled from the corps.
The incident recalled the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Political analysts have warned for months that a similar storming was a possibility in Brazil, given that Bolsonaro has sown doubt about the reliability of the nation's electronic voting system — without any evidence. The results were recognized as legitimate by politicians from across the spectrum, including some Bolsonaro allies, as well as dozens of foreign governments.
Unlike the 2021 attack in the U.S., it is likely that few officials were working in the Brazilian Congress and Supreme Court on a Sunday.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter that Washington condemned the attacks, saying that "using violence to attack democratic institutions is always unacceptable." Earlier videos on social media showed a limited presence of the capital's military police; one showed officers standing by as people flooded into Congress, with one using his phone to record images. The capital's security secretariat didn't respond to a request from The Associated Press for comment about the relative absence of the police.
"Brazilian authorities had two years to learn the lessons from the Capitol invasion and to prepare themselves for something similar in Brazil," said Maurício Santoro, a political science professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. "Local security forces in Brasilia failed in a systematic way to prevent and to respond to extremist actions in the city. And the new federal authorities, such as the ministers of justice and of defence, were not able to act in a decisive way." Federal District Gov. Ibaneis Rocha confirmed on Twitter he had fired the capital city's head of public security, Anderson Torres. Local media reported that Torres is currently in the U.S.
The office of Lula's attorney general asked the Supreme Court to order Torres' imprisonment.
Bolsonaro supporters have been protesting Lula's electoral win since Oct. 30, blocking roads, setting vehicles on fire and gathering outside military buildings, urging the armed forces to intervene. The head of Brazil's electoral authority rejected the request from Bolsonaro and his political party to nullify ballots cast on most electronic voting machines.
"Two years since Jan. 6, Trump's legacy continues to poison our hemisphere," U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who chairs the Senate's foreign relations committee, tweeted, adding that he blamed Bolsonaro for inciting the acts. "Protecting democracy & holding malign actors to account is essential."