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Brazil’s ransacked capital gets security upgrade as round-up continues

Photo: EVARISTO SA / AFP

January 16 | By AFP |

Brazilian authorities moved Monday to upgrade security at government buildings ransacked by rioters, and arrested a person accused of “anti-democratic acts” in a roundup of suspected authors of a violent January 8 uprising.

District authorities of the capital Brasilia said they would more than double the security deployment at the Esplanade of Ministries and Three Powers Square where the government presence is concentrated.

Eight days earlier, thousands forced their way into the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme court, smashing windows and furniture, destroying priceless works of art, and leaving behind graffiti messages calling for a military coup.

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Acting district governor Celina Leao told reporters Monday a military police battalion in charge of security would be boosted from 248 to 500 members on a permanent basis for “maximum peace of mind.”

Leao is standing in for Ibaneis Rocha, who is the target of an investigation into possible links to the riots and was relieved of his duties for 90 days.

Brazil’s deputy justice minister Ricardo Cappelli told the same press conference that investigators were seeking to determine whether there were any “professionals” among the rioters, who clamored for a military coup.

Delegated by the executive to take charge of security in Brasilia after the violence, Cappelli cited witness testimony of “men… with knowledge of the terrain, combat tactics” among the demonstrators.

Leftist new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his justice minister have both said the riots could unlikely have happened without inside help, including from the security forces.

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The district of Brasilia has been under federal control by presidential decree since the riots by followers of far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro.

Forty-four military police were injured while defending the buildings from rioters, said Cappelli.

The full extent of the damage to national heritage is still being determined.

‘Anti-democratic acts’

Bolsonaro, who is in the United States, has denied any connection to the uprising.

The ex-leader, who for years had sought to cast doubt on Brazil’s internationally-hailed election system, has been included in an investigation into the origins of the riots.

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His former justice minister Anderson Torres — who was in charge of security in Brasilia when the uprising happened — was arrested on Saturday.

According to the Federal Police, 1,159 people out of more than 2,000 suspected rioters initially detained remained under arrest.

The public prosecutor’s office (MPF), meanwhile, said more than 800 have made initial custody hearing appearances.

The Federal Police (PF) for its part, said a special operation dubbed Ulysses yielded the arrest of one person Monday.

The goal of Ulysses was to track down “persons investigated for anti-democratic acts after the second round of presidential elections” in October “as well as the acts that took place on January 8.”

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One of three arrest warrants was executed successfully, the PF said in statement without providing any details. 

Two individuals remain at large.

The operation, which also came armed with five search and seizure warrants, sought to find people who had blocked highways, organized demonstrations outside military barracks, and masterminded and financed the January 8 riots.

Ulysses officers seized “mobile phones, computers and miscellaneous documents,” said a PF statement, as well as evidence “capable of linking the suspects to the organization and leadership of events.”

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International

A court orders the arrest of the Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture accused of corruption

The Supreme Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine issued a preventive arrest warrant on Friday against the Minister of Agriculture, Mikola Solski, accused of being part of a plot that would have illegally appropriated about 2,500 hectares of land that belonged to the State before his arrival at the Ministry.

According to Ukrainian media, the court has issued a sixty-day arrest warrant, which Solski can avoid if he pays a bail of 75.7 million gryvnas (1.78 million euros at the current exchange rate).

Solski presented his resignation on Thursday – which must now be accepted by the Ukrainian Parliament – after being accused this week by the Anti-Corruption Office of Ukraine (NABU) of participating in a transfer of publicly owned land valued at 291 million gryvnas (about 7 million euros).

In addition, the organization investigates the still minister for trying to transfer another lot of land in an equally criminal way, valued at 190 million gryvnas (4.5 million euros).

The events occurred, according to the Anti-Corruption Office, between 2017 and 2021.

From 2019 to 2021, Solski was president of the Committee on Agriculture and Land Policy of the Ukrainian Parliament and in 2022 he was appointed minister.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has marked himself as one of his priorities to combat corruption at the highest level in time of war to modernize the country and meet the requirements for access to the European Union.

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International

The Chinese president tells the United States that he has to be “faithful” to his word to solve the “problems to be solved”

Chinese President Xi Jinping has told the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the United States must “be faithful to its word” in order to solve the “problems still to be solved” in the bilateral relationship.

“China and the United States have gone through ups and downs but we must respect each other, cooperate and coexist. We must be partners and not harm each other, and for that we have to look for common ground, be faithful to the words and determined with the facts,” Xi said during the meeting.

According to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Xi also warned that “you can’t say one thing and then do another,” after which he acknowledged that, “despite the consensus and progress made” in recent months there are still “many problems to solve and room to make an effort.”

“This year we celebrate the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. The important thing we have learned in this time is that we must be partners, not rivals. That we must achieve a mutual benefit instead of harming each other. The important thing is to look for the common points and put aside the differences,” Xi said during the meeting.

The Chinese president received Blinken this Friday in Beijing for an interview that was not part of the agenda of the official visit made to China by the American diplomat.

This is the second time Xi has received Blinken in Beijing, given that the Chinese president already met the American on his last visit to the Chinese capital in June 2023.

Before his meeting with Xi, Blinken also met today in Beijing with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, who warned him of “growing problems” in bilateral relations, after the U.S. Senate approved a bill that will force the Chinese company ByteDance to sell the popular TikTok video application if he does not want the platform to be banned in the United States.

ByteDance, the parent company of the platform, has made it clear today that it has no intention of selling the application despite US legislation.

Earlier this week, TikTok – which, like Western services such as Google, Facebook, X or Instagram, is blocked in China, where ByteDance operates a similar application called Douyin – already anticipated that it would challenge the new US law, which it considers “unconstitutional” in court.

U.S. legislators justify their decision by arguing that the platform poses a threat to the national security of the United States due to the possibility that the Chinese government will access user data.

In March, China criticized the “repression” against the application by the United States for being “an intimidating tactic” that will eventually “turn against” the North American country.

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International

Israeli bombings in the north and south of Gaza cause fifty deaths

The latest Israeli attacks and bombings along the Gaza Strip have caused the death of at least 51 people, most of them civilians, both in Gaza City (north) and in the southern area of Rafah.

Israeli fighter planes bombed a house belonging to the Al Shawa family last night, in the Al Rimal neighborhood, in Gaza City, where rescue teams recovered the lifeless bodies of three people, including those of a child and a woman, under the rubble.

As Palestinian sources reported to the WAFA news agency today, the victims and several injuries were transferred to the Al Ahli Arab Hospital, the last hospital in operation in Gaza City after the Israeli military siege left the Al Shifa inoperative in March.

Other bombings in the neighborhoods of Zaytun, south of Gaza City, and against a residential building in the center of the city, caused the death of another Gazan, as well as an indeterminate number of injuries.

In Rafah, one fisherman died and another was injured, according to Palestinian medical sources, while in the center of the enclave several Gazans were injured in attacks against the refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij.

According to the latest figures provided on Thursday by the Ministry of Health of the Government of Hamas, more than 34,300 Palestinians have already died in Gaza, 75% women and children.

One of those little ones is a Gaza baby rescued from her mother’s womb, who died in an Israeli airstrike perpetrated in Rafah last weekend.

After five days of struggle to stay alive, he has finally died, as confirmed this Friday by a family member.

Over the weekend, 16 other children were killed in Rafah, where Israel is expected to start a ground offensive.

A member of the Hamas political bureau asked the 18 signatory countries yesterday on Friday of a joint statement demanding the Islamists the “immediate” release of the 133 hostages, to also pressure Israel to accept a truce in the Gaza Strip.

Your sons and daughters are no more valuable than our sons and daughters,” the head of political and international relations of the political bureau of Hamas, Basem Naim, to which EFE had access, said today in a message.

Today, a delegation of the Egyptian Intelligence service is scheduled to arrive in Israel, in an attempt to revive the stagnant truce negotiations mediated by Cairo, Qatar and the United States, Egyptian security sources told EFE last night.

From Geneva, UN rapporteurs demanded that Israel allow the arrival in Gaza of the Freedom Flotilla that it plans to sail this Friday from Istanbul with 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid.

Diplomats have warned that the safe transit guarantee of this initiative is part of Israeli international obligations to prevent genocide in Palestinian territory.

“Israel must comply with international law, including the recent orders of the International Court of Justice, to ensure the unhindered arrival of humanitarian aid,” they said in a statement.

Israel warned on Friday that any arrival of aid to Gaza other than by air, land border crossings or the port of Ashdod will constitute a “provocation,” after being asked by EFE about the administrative blockade that the Freedom Flotilla – a civilian initiative organized by human rights activists – says it is suffering in Istanbul.

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