Former director of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) Saulo Moura da Cunha told a statement to the Supreme Court (STF) on Tuesday, 27, that the agency was only able to dig the severity of the acts of January 8 the day before. That day, vandals depredated the buildings of the three powers in Brasilia.
ABIN head at the beginning of the Lula administration, Cunha was summoned as a defense witness to Anderson Torres, Minister of Justice and Public Security in the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and Secretary of Public Security of the Federal District in early 2023. Torres is a defendant in the criminal action of the coup.
The former ABIN director also said that the agency was unaware of the protesters’ journey, and that this information only arrived at 8 am on the 8th itself.
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According to Saulo Moura da Cunha, the Federal Police (PF) provided information about buses in the federal capital, with people for the act on the 8th. On the 7th, there were 25 vehicles. On the 8th, there were already 100 buses in Granja do Torto. “100 buses are almost 5,000 people. We would have a large demonstration,” he said.
The alerts were already being made since January 2 to the Brazilian Intelligence System (Sisbin). At that date, the protester were already exchanging messages in applications calling for acts, suggesting depredation of the headquarters of the three powers. The first most striking warning occurred on the night of the 6th.
The Sisbin, among others, is the executive departments of the Ministry of the Civil House, the Institutional Security Office (GSI), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the intelligence centers of each of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Justice and the Intelligence Directorates of the folder, the Federal Police and the Federal Highway Police.
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On January 7, 2023, in the morning, there was the first contact with the Federal District Public Security Bureau, made by former Secretary of Planning and Management of ABIN with DF’s Undersecretary, Marília Ferreira de Alencar, when a group was made to discuss the consequences.
“These manifestations were actually taking shape. I thought we better open this channel,” Saulo said. There were successive alerts to Sisbin on the morning of the 8th, when Abin already knew that protesters would march towards the ministries’ terrace in the early afternoon.
Marilia is the only woman among the 31 tornadoes defendants by the STF. She would have coordinated the use of DF police forces “to support Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s illegitimate permanence in power,” according to the report of the Attorney General’s Office (PGR).
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According to Saulo, Abin did not receive information from other bodies via Sisbin to find out the flow of people to Brasilia in the days before January 8. “A good measure for us is from the Federal Highway Police. The PRF did not pass bus information detected on the road,” he said.
The former director was Anderson Torres’s last witness to testify on Monday morning. Earlier, former Federal Highway Police Director Djairlon Henrique Moura told the STF that Blitze during the second round of 2022 presidential elections occurred to verify the condition of cars and carriers, but did not prevent the flow of transport vehicles during the date. “More than 60% of supervised vehicles did not take longer than 15 minutes to release them,” he said.
He also denied that there was a specific direction to the Northeast, even though he confirmed that days before, there was an operation of the PRF on bus that were moving from the Midwest and Southeast to the Northeast.
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PF Delegate Braulio do Carmo Vieira, former Secretary of Integrated Operations of the Ministry of Justice, stated that the live in 2021, in which attacks were made to the smoothness of the electoral process, without proof, caused “discomfort” to Torres, which would have been “summoned” by Bolsonaro to participate. According to Braulio, the former minister had “technical ignorance” on the subject.
The trial will resume this afternoon when they will testify former education minister Victor Godoy and other PF and Abin employees in Bolsonaro’s management.
