Bombings in Brazil’s capital revive fears over fate of democracy

BRASÍLIA - A political malcontent set off multiple explosives in the Brazilian capital Wednesday evening, police say, reviving fears over the strength of democracy in a country that has been addled by misinformation and is still reeling from a large-scale attack on its federal buildings last year after the 2022 presidential election.

At 7:30 p.m., a car exploded outside the Brazilian Congress’s lower chamber. Less than a minute later, more explosions rattled Brazil’s Supreme Court offices. A man was found dead outside the Supreme Court, having apparently killed himself, authorities said.

Police have identified him as Francisco Wanderley Luiz, 59, a small-time conservative politician from the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, who has lambasted the left on social media and announced plans to launch an attack on Brazil’s capital in a plot to preserve “freedom.”

“Are we going to play,” he posted before the bombings. “Federal police, you have 72 hours to disarm a bomb that’s in this house of communists.”

No bystanders were injured or killed in the attack, and no buildings were harmed.

The attack has rattled Latin America’s largest democracy, which in recent years has grappled with political instability fueled by rampant misinformation, deepening polarization and the rising threat of violence. After the electoral defeat of President Jair Bolsonaro, who spent months sowing unfounded doubts over the integrity of the country’s electoral system, thousands of his supporters attacked the country’s principal federal buildings, leading to a protracted debate over the strength of the country’s democracy and how severely to punish the assailants.

Wednesday’s bombings inflamed that conversation.

“This was not an isolated incident,” Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said Thursday morning. “The impunity experienced by the people who have attacked our democracy resulted in other actions, like the one from yesterday. … His idea was to get inside and explode a bomb inside the federal Supreme Court.”

Figures on the right who have called for amnesty to be granted to participants in last year’s Jan. 8 insurrection tried to distance themselves from Wednesday evening’s bombings.

“Despite this being an isolated incident, and which everything suggests was caused by mental disturbances in the person who, unfortunately, ended up dying, this is something that should cause us to reflect,” Bolsonaro wrote on the social media platform X. “The time has long since come for Brazil to again cultivate an environment for different ideas to be contested peacefully.”

In social media posts, Luiz, who unsuccessfully ran in 2020 for a municipal position in Santa Catarina on Bolsonaro’s Liberty Party platform, lambasted Bolsonaro’s political enemies. In one post in August, he took aim at the Supreme Court, which Bolsonaro has frequently excoriated during his time in power.

“All that was done to try and improve the country hasn’t resulted in anything!!!” he wrote. “It’s time to change our path and actions!!! Where is the big problem? The Supreme Court!!!!”

He wrote that he was planning to take action.

“Don’t cry for me,” he posted. “I give my life so the kids can be raised in freedom.”

According to a police report obtained by The Washington Post, a security guard spotted Luiz outside the Supreme Court building Wednesday evening. The guard told police that Luiz stopped in front of a statue and took out a fire extinguisher. When the security guard approached him, he opened his shirt and told them not to come any closer.

Luiz threw several devices to the ground, which exploded, the report says.

A federal police official, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said Luiz’s ex-wife informed them that he was planning to kill Moraes, the Supreme Court justice, who is a target of the ire of Bolsonaro supporters.

“Outside of the January 8 attack, this was the gravest action against the Brazilian Supreme Court,” Moraes said Wednesday morning. “He tried to come inside, and was only stopped because security guards saw that he had devices strapped to his body.”