Brazilian police thwart plan to kill, kidnap officials

BRASILIA: Brazilian police on Wednesday (March 22) rounded up participants in a suspected conspiracy to assassinate and kidnap a high-profile figure, including a former judge, officials said.

Police issued nine arrest warrants and carried out 24 raids in the capital Brasilia and the states of São Paulo, Mato Grosso do Sul, Rondonia and Paraná.

According to the Federal Police (PF), the group planned “ransom killings and kidnappings” in at least five of Brazil’s 26 states.

The targets were “government officials and public officials,” he said.

A member of the PF, who requested anonymity, told AFP that former judge Sergio Moro, now a senator, was one of the targets.

Moro was the lead judge in a corruption case that sent current leftist president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva to prison before his conviction was revoked, and later Jair Bolsonaro, Lula’s predecessor and rival. served as Minister of Justice.

PF sources said the gang targeted in Wednesday’s operation had ties to Brazil’s largest criminal group, the First Capital Command (PCC).

Moro himself took to Twitter to point the finger at the PCC about his “retaliation plan against me, my family and other public authorities.”

In 2019, he ordered the transfer of PCC leader Marcos Willians Helbus Camacho, aka “Marcola”, and 21 other senior gang members to a high-security prison.

Justice Minister Flavio Dino said the conspiracy involved plotting to kill “several high-ranking officials, including a senator and a public prosecutor,” but did not name them.

A PF statement said the attacks planned by the group “may have occurred at the same time.”