Brazil has formally requested from Argentina information on the whereabouts of 143 Brazilians fugitives from justice in the case opened by the coup attempt on January 8, 2023 in Brasilia. The suspicion of the Brazilian authorities is that dozens of radical Bolsonaro supporters have taken refuge in the neighboring country, taking advantage of the harmony between the president, Javier Milei, and the extreme right led by former president Jair Bolsonaro.
The Government of Brazil wants to know if these 143 Brazilians are in Argentina and in what condition: whether as simple tourists, with some type of residence permit or if they have already requested to be recognized as refugees or political asylees. This last category is the most thorny, in the opinion of the Brazilian authorities, because it is the one that could most complicate an eventual extradition.
The Brazilian ambassador to Argentina, Julio Bitelli, explained that on Friday, June 7, an official letter from the Supreme Court of Brazil containing “143 names of convicted criminals” was delivered to the Argentine Foreign Ministry to indicate who, on that list, They are in Argentine territory. “We have made it clear to the Argentine authorities the seriousness and gravity of the matter, that is very clear to them,” the ambassador told the Globonews network.
The diplomat admitted that in the entire legal-diplomatic mess there is a factor that “complicates” things: the requests for refuge. According to information from the Brazilian Federal Police, among those 143 outlaws there are at least 47 who fled to Argentina and have already requested asylum. In these cases, the Argentine National Refugee Commission conducts an interview with each applicant and decides case by case. The final decision, as is usual in these procedures, can be quite delayed. Furthermore, Argentine law ensures that this process is confidential, so a priorithe names of the suspects who have already initiated the process could not be provided to the Brazilian authorities.
Argentina supposedly hosts the bulk of the fugitive Bolsonaristas, but there are more. The Federal Police believe that there may be around 180 escapees in total and that there would be a few dozen in Uruguay and Paraguay, although these two countries have not yet been notified.
Last week, the Federal Police deployed a macro operation in Brazil to arrest 209 people accused of ignoring precautionary measures, such as the obligation to wear an electronic anklet, the prohibition of using social networks or contact with other people under investigation. The agents only managed to arrest 50, the rest may be outside Brazilian borders.
All of these Brazilians whose whereabouts are a question are related to the wave of Bolsonaro supporters who on January 8 attacked the main buildings in Brasilia; the Congress, the Planalto palace (seat of the Presidency) and the Supreme Court. Many were arrested in the following days and since then have been receiving quite harsh sentences, in some cases up to 17 years in prison.
According to Brazilian justice, they participated in an attempted coup d’état so that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had assumed the presidency a week before, would not exercise power. For an important part of Brazilians, however, they were just vandals who did not deserve such high penalties. Several far-right deputies asked last week that Argentina receive them as “political exiles.”
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