Brazil’s federal police carried out new raids on Friday as part of an investigation into the Jan. 8 insurrection, when supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed government buildings in Brasilia.
Police said in a statement that they were serving three preventive arrest warrants and 14 search and seizure warrants ordered by the Supreme Court in five states and the federal district, where Brasilia is located.
The new efforts represent the fourth phase of an operation launched last month aimed at identifying people who participated, financed or fomented the unrest, in which a mob invaded and ransacked Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court.
The police did not reveal the names of the people targeted by the raids, but stressed that they are being investigated for the crimes of “violent abolition of the rule of law, coup d’état, qualified damage, association to commit crimes, incitement, destruction and deterioration of specially protected property.”
Demonstrators in Brasilia were protesting Bolsonaro’s defeat by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in an election in October and calling for a military coup to oust Lula and restore the far-right leader.
