SAO PAULO: Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro called for his supporters to rally Sunday in his defense, as he faces decades in prison if convicted of plotting to cling to power despite losing the 2022 election.
“Brazil needs all of us. It’s for freedom, for justice,” the far-right former president (2019-2022) said on X, urging his supporters to march along Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue, a key thoroughfare of Latin America’s largest metropolis.
“This is a call for us to show strength... this massive presence will give us courage,” he declared Saturday night on the AuriVerde Brasil YouTube channel.
The demonstration — which already had drawn crowds of Bolsonaro supporters by mid-morning Sunday — follows a hectic several weeks for the embattled ex-leader.
During a key phase in his Supreme Court trial earlier this month, he denied involvement in an alleged coup plot to wrest back power after leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva narrowly beat Bolsonaro at the ballot box in October 2022.
Brazil’s police have also called for Bolsonaro to be separately charged with illegal espionage while president, along with his son.
Bolsonaro, 70, has rejected any wrongdoing, claiming the various cases against him amount to politically motivated judicial hounding, aimed at preventing him from making a comeback in the 2026 elections.
The former army captain dreams of emulating Donald Trump’s return to the White House, despite being banned from holding public office until 2030 over his attacks on Brazil’s electronic voting system.
Bolsonaro had already called for several protests throughout his legal saga, but attendance appears to have declined in recent months.
According to estimates by the University of Sao Paulo, some 45,000 people participated in the most recent march on Paulista Avenue in April, almost four times fewer than in February.
Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas said he would attend the march and urged others to join.
“We need to talk about freedom... we are going to promote peace.”
De Freitas, a former Bolsonaro minister, is a top candidate to represent the conservatives in the 2026 presidential election.
Facing possible prison, former Brazilian president Bolsonaro seeks to rally faithful
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Facing possible prison, former Brazilian president Bolsonaro seeks to rally faithful
- Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro faces decades in prison if convicted of plotting to cling to power despite losing the 2022 election
Nigeria signals more strikes likely in ‘joint’ US operations
- Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country
LAGOS: Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country.
The west African country faces multiple interlinked security crises in its north, where jihadists have been waging an insurgency in the northeast since 2009 and armed “bandit” gangs raid villages and stage kidnappings in the northwest.
The US strikes come after Abuja and Washington were locked in a diplomatic dispute over what Trump characterised as the mass killing of Christians amid Nigeria’s myriad armed conflicts.
Washington’s framing of the violence as amounting to Christian “persecution” is rejected by the Nigerian government and independent analysts, but has nonetheless resulted in increased security coordination.
“It’s Nigeria that provided the intelligence,” the country’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, told broadcaster Channels TV, saying he was on the phone with US State Secretary Marco Rubio ahead of the bombardment.
Asked if there would be more strikes, Tuggar said: “It is an ongoing thing, and we are working with the US. We are working with other countries as well.”
Targets unclear
The Department of Defense’s US Africa Command, using an acronym for the Daesh group, said “multiple Daesh terrorists” were killed in an attack in the northwestern state of Sokoto.
US defense officials later posted video of what appeared to be the nighttime launch of a missile from the deck of a battleship flying the US flag.
Which of Nigeria’s myriad armed groups were targeted remains unclear.
Nigeria’s jihadist groups are mostly concentrated in the northeast of the country, but have made inroads into the northwest.
Researchers have recently linked some members from an armed group known as Lakurawa — the main jihadist group located in Sokoto State — to Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which is mostly active in neighboring Niger and Mali.
Other analysts have disputed those links, though research on Lakurawa is complicated as the term has been used to describe various armed fighters in the northwest.
Those described as Lakurawa also reportedly have links to Al-Qaeda affiliated group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a rival group to ISSP.
While Abuja has welcomed the strikes, “I think Trump would not have accepted a ‘No’ from Nigeria,” said Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher for Good Governance Africa, an NGO.
Amid the diplomatic pressure, Nigerian authorities are keen to be seen as cooperating with the US, Samuel told AFP, even though “both the perpetrators and the victims in the northwest are overwhelmingly Muslim.”
Tuggar said that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu “gave the go-ahead” for the strikes.
The foreign minister added: “It must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other.”
