Brazil arrests G20 guards over alleged 2022 Lula assassination plot

Brazilian police on Tuesday arrested four soldiers guarding the G20 summit over an alleged plot to assassinate then President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a 2022 “coup,” a federal police source told AFP.

The four “were arrested in Rio, where they were participating in the security operation for the G20 leaders’ meeting,” said the source, who added that a police officer was also taken into custody.

A statement by Brazil’s federal police said the suspects were “mostly soldiers with special forces training,” but made no mention of them being part of the current G20 summit security deployment.

They were arrested Tuesday in an operation to “dismantle a criminal organization responsible for planning a coup d’etat to prevent the government legitimately elected in 2022 elections taking office,” it said.

The alleged plot was to have been carried out on December 15, 2022 — just weeks before Lula took office at the start of 2023 — and involved “the murder of the candidates to the presidency and vice presidency,” the statement said.

They also allegedly planned to assassinate a Supreme Court justice, it said.

The alleged conspirators — said to possess “advanced military operational” know-how — codenamed their plot “Green and Yellow Dagger,” according to the statement, in apparent reference to colors on the Brazilian flag.

They faced potential charges of violently trying to overthrow the government, coup-plotting and being part of a criminal organization, the statement said.

In October 2022, left-wing Lula won the presidential election over the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings in Brasilia on January 8, 2023 in an insurrection.

Several investigations have been opened into those events, as well as other alleged plots to prevent Lula taking office.