Bolsonaro supporters attacked important offices in Brazil, leading to arrests

In Brazil, police have made hundreds of arrests and reclaimed control of the Congress, presidential mansion, and Supreme Court from rioting Bolsonaro supporters.

A grim echo of the invasion of the US Capitol two years ago by ardent supporters of former President Donald Trump, the police said in a tweet on Sunday that at least 300 people had been detained in the nation’s capital, Brasilia, following the rampage by thousands of Bolsonaro’s supporters who refuse to accept his election defeat.

The police pledged that investigations would go on until the final member was found.

No initial reports of fatalities or injuries were made following the attack on Sunday, but the attackers left a path of devastation, tossing furniture through the presidential palace’s broken windows, flooding portions of Congress with sprinklers, and looting the Supreme Court’s ceremonial rooms.

The protest, which lasted little over three hours, highlighted the extreme polarization that still exists in the nation days after the victory of Bolsonaro’s opponent, the leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and days after his inauguration as president.

Lula read a recently signed decree ordering the federal government to take responsibility of security in Brasilia during a news conference from Sao Paulo state, where he accused Bolsonaro of promoting the riots by what he called “fascist zealots.”

What they did has never been done before, according to Lula.

“We’ll find all these people who committed this, and we’ll punish them.”

The president subsequently took a flight back to Brasilia where he toured the looted facilities and oversaw the response, according to TV Globo in Brazil.