Former Brazilian Air Force chief refused to support Bolsonaro’s coup plan
In Brazil, former Air Force commander Carlos de Almeida Baptista Júnior said in a new book that, at the end of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential term, he refused to support a draft decree to annul the results of the 2022 election. The document envisaged preventing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking office as president and keeping Bolsonaro in power, The Guardian reports.
According to Baptista Júnior, at a meeting of the heads of the navy, army and air force, Defence Minister General Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira handed them copies of the draft decree. The former Air Force chief claims that he refused even to take the document, declared that the Air Force would not participate and left the meeting.
Military commanders’ refusal
The investigation and trial, according to the publication, established that the plan did not advance primarily because Baptista Júnior and the then army commander, General Marco Antônio Freire Gomes, refused to join it. Former navy commander Admiral Almir Garnier Santos and Nogueira were convicted in the case concerning the attempted coup; they are serving their sentences at military facilities. Bolsonaro is under house arrest.
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Baptista Júnior, a former fighter pilot, described in the book more than ten meetings at which Bolsonaro discussed with the armed forces leadership the possibility of remaining in power. At one of them, he said, Freire Gomes told the president after discussing a violation of the constitutional order that he would be forced to arrest him. During the trial, both Freire Gomes and Bolsonaro denied this episode.
Book release ahead of elections
Baptista Júnior’s book, whose title can be translated as “I Said No! The Anti-Coup Bastion,” is due to be released on September 15, about two weeks before the first round of the presidential election. Lula will face Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president’s son.
The former Air Force chief explained that he wrote the book because, according to polls, around one-third of Brazil’s population does not believe there was an attempted coup. He also said that refusing to support the plan cost him many friendships, while some military personnel still call him a traitor. According to him, after Baptista Júnior’s refusal, General Walter Souza Braga Netto, who was also convicted in the case, ordered other officers to attack him and his family on social media.
