Brazil's Bolsonaro charged with plotting coup d'etat to violently dismantle state'

Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro and some of his closest allies are among dozens of people formally accused by federal police of a criminal conspiracy to obliterate Brazil's democratic system through a coup.

- Tom Phillips

Federal police confirmed yesterday that investigators had concluded their long-running investigation into what they called a coordinated attempt to "violently dismantle the constitutional state".

In a statement, police said the report which has been forwarded to the supreme court - formally accused 37 people of crimes including involvement in an attempted coup, the formation of a criminal organisation, and trying to tear down one of the world's largest democracies.

Bolsonaro, a disgraced army captain turned populist politician, was president from 2019 until the end of 2022. He has been accused along with some of the most important members of his far-right administration.

They include his former spy chief, the far-right congressman Alexandre Ramagem; the former defence ministers Gen Walter Braga Netto and Gen Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira; and the former minister of justice and public security, Anderson Torres.

Others on the list include the former minister of institutional security, Gen Augusto Heleno; the former navy commander Adm Almir Garnier Santos; the president of Bolsonaro's political party, Valdemar Costa Neto; and Filipe Martins, one of Bolsonaro's top foreign policy advisers.