A judge in their sights Murder plot at heart of takeover attempt

The conspirators used codenames to conceal their identities as they geared up for their mission: to plunge Brazil into chaos by assassinating a celebrity supreme court judge called Alexandre de Moraes.

- Tom Phillips, Brasilia Tiago Rogero, Rio de Janeiro

On an encrypted messaging group, one plotter used the alias Brazil, another Japan and a third Austria. "Each of them had the name of a team," Moraes said this week as he denounced the alleged plot to murder him as part of an attempt to destroy South America's largest democracy.

The group of football-loving would-be assassins abandoned their task at the last minute.

"I'm close to the position. Are you going to cancel the game?" the person codenamed Austria asked associates on their Signal group at just before 9pm on 15 December 2022, as he lurked near Moraes's home in Brazil's capital, Brasilia.

"Abort," replied Germany, according to a federal police report.

The cinematic plot - which was nicknamed Operation Copa 2022 (Operation World Cup 2022) and involved at least six special forces troops - was at the heart of this week's historic trial of Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was on Thursday sentenced to 27 years in prison for trying to stage a coup after he lost the 2022 election to his leftwing opponent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.