West News Wire: Anderson Torres, a former minister of justice and public security in Brazil who oversaw security during last week’s takeover of federal buildings in Brasilia, has been detained on suspicion of “omission” and “connivance.”
Upon arriving back in Brazil on Saturday from a vacation in Florida, the same US state that former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro had visited after losing the election to current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Torres who served as Bolsonaro’s justice minister was detained.
When police searched his residence this week, the ex-minister claimed on Thursday that the evidence they produced was misinterpreted.
Torres’ arrest was mandated on Tuesday by Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Brazilian Supreme Court. The charges were not immediately clear, but Moraes cited alleged “omission” and “connivance” by Torres.
The new justice minister, Flavio Dino, said that the authorities would give Torres until Monday to return to Brazil or he would face extradition.
Upon learning of Moraes’s detention order, Torres said on Twitter on Tuesday that he would interrupt his holiday and return to Brazil to hand himself in.
Dino also confirmed the discovery at Torres’s home of a draft decree proposing emergency steps for the possible “correction” of the October election, which Lula won by a razor-thin margin.
The draft decree which is undated and unsigned has Bolsonaro’s name at the bottom. But Dino said the authorship was unknown.
Torres said on Twitter the document was “likely” part of a pile of papers that were destined to be destroyed, adding that the contents of the draft had been taken “out of context” to “feed false narratives” against him.
Last week, thousands of “Bolsonaristas” stormed the government buildings, breaking windows and furniture, destroying priceless works of art, and leaving graffiti messages calling for a military coup.
