Police in Brazil have arrested five people suspected of planning to kill Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva shortly before he was sworn in as president.
Four of those detained on Tuesday are soldiers and one is a police officer, local media reported.
The five were allegedly part of a plot to kill President-elect Lula and his vice-presidential running mate, Geraldo Alckmin, on 15 December 2022, just over two weeks before the presidential inauguration.
Lula was elected in October 2022, narrowly defeating incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who never publicly accepted defeat. A week after Lula was sworn in, Bolsonaro supporters stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace and vandalised the buildings.
Police eventually cleared the buildings of the rioters and detained thousands.
Investigations into the events of 8 January 2023 as well as previous alleged attempts to prevent Lula from being sworn in have been under way since.
However, this is the first time that police have revealed an alleged attempt to assassinate Lula.
Speaking after news of the arrests broke, Social Communications Minister Paulo Pimenta said that the alleged plot to assassinate Lula and Alckmin had almost gone ahead.
Brazilian news site G1 said that what was particularly worrying was that four of those arrested were active members of the military and the fifth a serving member of the police force.
AFP news agency quoted a federal police source as saying that the four soldiers “were arrested in Rio, where they were participating in the security operation for the G20 leaders’ meeting” currently under way in the Brazilian city.
Credit: bbc.com
