Reserve General Mario Fernandes, who admitted to the (Supreme Federal Court) to have drafted in 2022, headed the Army Special Operations Command in Goiânia, when he met the then president ().
It was July 2019 and Bolsonaro had decided to visit the headquarters of the command, being the first president to do this since redemocratization. Mario Fernandes himself and, two years later, was called to join his government.
Fernandes, 61, was arrested last November on suspicion of planning the deaths of (PT), Geraldo Alckmin (PSB) and, Minister of the Supreme Court, after Bolsonaro’s defeat in the 2022 elections. The purpose was to prevent the petista’s inauguration. According to investigations, to put the plan into practice, Fernandes regimented some of his former commanders in Goiânia – the “black kids”, as the military of the special forces are known.
His arrest was decreed after the green and yellow dagger file, with the details of the plan, was found on his computer.
“I confirm, excellence. This, in fact, is a digital file that portrays nothing more than a thought of mine that was digitized,” Fernandes told the STF testimony on Thursday (24).
He minimized the importance of the document, claiming that it was the “view of a military man with the analysis of a situation” and denied having shown the document to others. “Today I regret having scanned this,” he said.
“I printed it for a personal custom of avoiding reading the document on the screen, but I printed it to me and soon after I torn,” he added.
At the time he elaborated the document, Fernandes was the executive secretary of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, being the number two of Minister Luiz Eduardo Ramos, who is a friend of Bolsonaro and the scammer plot in the STF.
Like Bolsonaro, Fernandes graduated from Aman (Military Academy of Negras) and took a course of skydiving. In his statement to the Supreme Court, the reserve general said he was not close to the former president despite the affinity between the two.
After the Bolsonaro government, Fernandes was packed in the office of the federal deputy (PL-RJ), former Minister of Health in previous management, between 2023 and 2024.
To the STF the general said that at the time of the 2022 defeat, Bolsonaro was concerned with the possibility of electoral fraud, something propagated by the former president throughout his term even without evidence, evidence and inspections showing the opposite. “What I was in favor, and always was, was that President Bolsonaro, within his attributions and prerogatives as chief executive, seeking solutions to these doubts,” he said.
But in November 2022, when he elaborated the green and yellow dagger, Fernandes fired on WhatsApp, General Marco Antonio Freire Gomes, pressing for a coup d’état.
“It’s now or never, commander, we have to act,” he wrote.
The complaint offered by the Attorney General’s Office states that the general acted “at the dialogue between the government and Bolsonaro supporters” who were camped asking for a military coup. According to the prosecution, he was four times at the camp mounted in Brasilia.
The Attorney General also says that Mário Fernandes was responsible “for coordinating the monitoring and neutralization actions of public authorities”.
“The plan was awarded measures of operational recognition, providing for the monitoring of ‘frequency and stay places’ by Minister Alexandre de Moraes, with observation of his residence, work and place of sports.”
The accusation also states that he would make the “strategic advice” of a office that would be mounted with the consummation of the military coup.
