BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said today that the suicide bomber who tried to get into the top court on Wednesday had intended to blow up the building, casting it as part of a growing wave of attacks on democracy.
The explosions outside the court and in a nearby parking lot, which federal police called attacks, raised security concerns days ahead of the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the capital Brasilia.
Police identified the man who killed himself in a blast outside the Supreme Court as a former city council candidate from ex-President Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing party with a history of heated political rhetoric online.
A police report seen by Reuters, confirmed as authentic by people familiar with the matter, said Francisco Wanderley Luiz, 59, threw an object at the court building that caused no damage, thenlaidon the ground and exploded a homemade bomb that killed him.
Brazil’s electoral records show Luiz lost a 2020 race for city council in Rio do Sul, in the southern state of Santa Catarina, as a member of Bolsonaro’s right-wing Liberal Party.
Moraes, who is among Supreme Court justices targeted with threats for overseeing investigations into Bolsonaro and his supporters, said Luiz may have acted alone but the attack was the result of rhetoric dating back to the Bolsonaro government.
He called the explosions the worst attack on the Supreme Court since supporters of Bolsonaro ransacked the building in a riot last year.
Bolsonaro distanced himself from Wednesday night’s violence, saying on social media that it was an isolated incident caused by a person with mental health issues.
Police found more explosives at a house that Luiz rented in Brasilia, which were detonated with a bomb disposal robot. His cell phone was later found in a parked trailer.
Investigators inspected his body on Thursday morning, clothed in a green jacket and pants with symbols similar to a deck of cards, as it lay in the Plaza of the Three Powers, an iconic square connecting Brazil’s three branches of government.
It was the scene of chaos on Jan. 8 last year when Bolsonaro supporters vandalized government buildings to protest his electoral defeat to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
In the weeks before those riots in the capital, police foiled a bomb plot near the Brasilia airport inspired by Bolsonaro’s baseless allegations of a stolen election.
Before and after losing the 2022 race to Lula, Bolsonaro sowed doubts about the legitimacy of an electoral system run by the courts and attacked Supreme Court decisions as illegitimate.
Brazil’s top electoral court barred Bolsonaro from public office through 2030 due to that rhetoric, and federal police are investigating his role in an alleged coup plot after the vote.
He has denied any wrongdoing and his party insists he will be its presidential candidate in 2026.
Wednesday’s blasts in the heart of the capital could bring fresh attention to that police probe into Bolsonaro, which was expected to wrap up this month.
The first explosion went off in a parking lot some 300 meters from the Supreme Court building and blew open the trunk of a car owned by Luiz. Other blasts seconds apart went off in front of the court in the square where police found his body.
The Supreme Court justices had just ended a plenary session when the blasts were heard and they evacuated safely, the court said in a statement.
Lula had left the executive palace, across the square from the court, less than an hour before the explosions.