A Brazilian Senate commission on Tuesday approved a report that recommends criminal charges be brought against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, including crimes against humanity, for his COVID-19 policies.
Seven of the panel’s 11 senators voted to endorse the text — presented last week after a six-month investigation into Brazil’s pandemic response — which also calls for the indictment of 77 other people, including several ministers and three of Bolsonaro’s children.
The nearly 1,200-page report also urges the Brazilian Supreme Court to suspend the leader’s access to his accounts on social media platforms YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for saying that COVID-19 vaccines were linked to AIDS.
Photo: AFP
Following dozens of often tense and harrowing hearings, the report finds Bolsonaro “deliberately exposed” Brazilians to “mass infection” in a disastrous attempt to reach herd immunity from the coronavirus.
The report calls for the president to be indicted for nine crimes related to his downplaying of COVID-19 and flouting expert advice on containing it.
The alleged crimes include “crimes against humanity,” “prevarication,” “charlatanism” and incitement to crime.
The committee does not have the power to bring charges itself, and it is unlikely that the Brazilian attorney general or lower-house speaker would open criminal or impeachment proceedings.
However, the report adds to the damage as Bolsonaro reels from his lowest-ever approval ratings, heading into an election next year, with polls placing him on track to lose to former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The crimes against humanity charge theoretically has the potential to be tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
“We can no longer tolerate this type of behavior,” the lawmakers said in a court filing earlier signed by the panel’s deputy chair, Brazilian Senator Randolfe Rodrigues.
The committee hearings, broadcast live, have featured witness statements about the use of ineffective medication on “human guinea pigs.”
The senators’ court filing called for the authorities to lift the data confidentiality on Bolsonaro’s social media accounts and order Facebook and Twitter, as well as YouTube owner Google, to provide normally secret information on the president’s usage.
The document also called on the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court to order Bolsonaro to make a retraction in a nationally televised address, “refuting any correlation between vaccination against the coronavirus and developing AIDS,” or face a fine of 50,000 reais (US$9,004) for every day he fails to comply.
Bolsonaro made the claim on Thursday last week in his weekly live address on social media.
He said that “official reports” from the British government “suggest that people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 are developing acquired immune deficiency syndrome much faster than expected.”
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