Senior Brazil military figures backed plot to seize power after Bolsonaro’s election defeat, federal documents allege

Brazil came within a whisker of a far-right military coup and the assassination of a supreme court judge just days before President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power in January 2023, a federal police report has claimed.

The report about the alleged plot to help the rightwing populist Jair Bolsonaro cling to power was made public on Tuesday, and paints a chilling portrait of how close one of the world’s largest democracies came to being plunged back into authoritarian rule.