{"id":418935,"date":"2025-09-12T17:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T17:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/418935\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T17:00:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T17:00:17","slug":"operation-world-cup-the-murder-plot-at-the-heart-of-brazils-trial-of-the-century-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/418935\/","title":{"rendered":"Operation World Cup: the murder plot at the heart of Brazil\u2019s trial of the century | Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"

The conspirators used codenames to conceal their identities as they prepared for their mission: to plunge Brazil<\/a> into chaos by assassinating a celebrity supreme court judge called Alexandre de Moraes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On an encrypted messaging group, one plotter used the alias Brazil<\/a>, another Japan and a third Austria.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach of them had the name of a team,\u201d Moraes said this week as he denounced the alleged plot to murder him as part of an attempt to destroy South America\u2019s largest democracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The group of football-loving would-be assassins abandoned their task at the last minute.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m close to the position. Are you going to cancel the game?\u201d the person codenamed Austria asked their associates on their Signal group at just before 9pm on 15 December 2022, as he lurked near Moraes\u2019s home in Brazil\u2019s capital, Bras\u00edlia.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbort,\u201d replied \u201cGermany\u201d, according to a federal police report.<\/p>\n

The cinematic plot, nicknamed Operation Copa 2022 (Operation World Cup 2022) and involving at least six special forces troops, was at the heart of this week\u2019s historic trial of Brazil\u2019s former president, Jair Bolsonaro. He was on Thursday sentenced to 27 years in prison for trying to stage a coup<\/a> after he lost the 2022 election to his leftwing opponent, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, known as Lula.<\/p>\n

\u201c[He tried to] annihilate the essential pillars of the democratic rule-of-law state,\u201d said Moraes as he accused Bolsonaro of being the leader of a sprawling conspiracy, which included plans to assassinate Lula and the vice-president-elect, Geraldo Alckmin, to stop them taking power on 1 January 2023.<\/p>\n

Jair Bolsonaro\u2019s supporters at a protest this month. Photograph: Luis Nova\/AP<\/p>\n

Moraes said hitmen had planned to \u201cneutralise\u201d him using \u201cextremely powerful weapons\u201d capable of piercing his bullet-proof car; they also allegedly considered killing Lula during a public event with poison or drugs that would cause organ failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m someone who should be really thankful to be alive,\u201d Lula said last year after the alleged poison plot was revealed.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro has denied engineering a coup or being involved in an assassination plot, calling such claims \u201ca little story\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Moraes said there was \u201cample evidence\u201d indicating the far-right politician was aware of Operation World Cup 2022, which the judge said was part of a larger intrigue called Green and Yellow Dagger.<\/p>\n

Police investigators said a copy of the blueprint for a \u201cclandestine operation\u201d with \u201cterrorist hallmarks\u201d was printed out in the presidential palace on 6 December 2022 by an army general called M\u00e1rio Fernandes. At the time Gen Fernandes, who was arrested last year, was a senior official in Bolsonaro\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis [plan] wasn\u2019t printed out in a cave. It wasn\u2019t printed out hidden away in a room of terrorists. It was printed out in the presidential palace. It was printed out in the seat of the Brazilian government \u2026 at the same moment that president Jair Messias Bolsonaro was there,\u201d Moraes told the court on Tuesday as Bolsonaro\u2019s trial reached its conclusion.<\/p>\n

Alexandre de Moraes and Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, who said he was \u2018someone who should be really thankful to be alive\u2019. Photograph: Adriano Machado\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cThe planning is so detailed that it even details the chances of success, what the collateral damage might be, what weaponry should be used,\u201d added Moraes.<\/p>\n

A copy of the Green and Yellow Dagger plan, obtained by federal police investigators, suggests plotters planned to use an arsenal that included assault rifles, a belt-fed machine gun and even a Swedish anti-tank weapon, used on the battlefield in Ukraine. \u201cThese are weapons of war commonly used by combat groups,\u201d the police report says.<\/p>\n

According to the investigators, the plan to assassinate Moraes was aborted only because a court session was delayed \u2013 and, more importantly, the commanders of the army and air force refused to endorse Bolsonaro\u2019s coup plot.<\/p>\n

Brazil has had more than a dozen coup attempts since it became a republic in 1889 but none, so far as is known, involved a plan to assassinate those being deposed.<\/p>\n

The historian Lucas Pedretti said that did not necessarily mean such plots had not existed. Rather, the 2022 plot had come to light because, for the first time in history, the coup plotters had been investigated and put on trial.<\/p>\n

Pedretti said the existence of the assassination plan was \u201cshocking, but not so surprising\u201d. The historian, who studies Brazil\u2019s brutal 1964-85 military dictatorship, said the armed forces still promoted internally the idea that the bloody regime was a \u201cnecessary and legitimate response\u201d to a supposed communist threat.<\/p>\n

Quick GuideBrazil’s dictatorship 1964-1985Show<\/p>\n

How did it begin?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s leftist president, Jo\u00e3o Goulart, was toppled in a coup in April 1964. General Humberto Castelo Branco became leader, political parties were banned, and the country was plunged into 21 years of military rule.<\/p>\n

The repression intensified under Castelo Branco\u2019s hardline successor, Artur da Costa e Silva, who took power in 1967. He was responsible for a notorious decree called AI-5 that gave him wide ranging dictatorial powers and kicked off the so-called \u201canos de chumbo\u201d (years of lead), a bleak period of tyranny and violence which would last until 1974.<\/p>\n

What happened during the dictatorship?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Supporters of Brazil\u2019s 1964-1985 military regime – including Jair Bolsonaro – credit it with bringing security and stability to the South American country and masterminding a decade-long economic \u201cmiracle\u201d.<\/p>\n

It also pushed ahead with several pharaonic infrastructure projects including the still unfinished Trans-Amazonian highway and the eight-mile bridge across Rio\u2019s Guanabara bay.<\/p>\n

But the regime, while less notoriously violent than those in Argentina and Chile, was also responsible for murdering or killing hundreds of its opponents and imprisoning thousands more. Among those jailed and tortured were Brazil\u2019s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, then a leftwing rebel.<\/p>\n

It was also a period of severe censorship. Some of Brazil\u2019s best-loved musicians – including Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso – went into exile in Europe, writing songs about their enforced departures.<\/p>\n

How did it end?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Political exiles began returning to Brazil in 1979 after an amnesty law was passed that began to pave the way for the return of democracy.<\/p>\n

But the pro-democracy \u201cDiretas J\u00e1\u201d (Direct elections now!) movement only hit its stride in 1984 with a series of vast and historic street rallies in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, S\u00e3o Paulo and Belo Horizonte.<\/p>\n

Civilian rule returned the following year and a new constitution was introduced in 1988. The following year Brazil held its first direct presidential election in nearly three decades.<\/p>\n

Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this is particularly true in the case of the special forces,\u201d he said, referring to the army group to which the men accused of plotting to kill Moraes, Lula and Alckmin belonged.<\/p>\n

Police believe the men involved in the Moraes murder plot were special forces operatives known as the \u201ckids pretos\u201d or \u201cblack cap boys\u201d because of the black caps they wore. Pedretti said the group, set up during the cold war, still maintained the same \u201cenemy elimination mindset\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Bolsonaro\u2019s attempted coup, spearheaded by him and his generals, they simply put that logic and the expertise of the \u2018kids pretos\u2019 at the service of the coup-mongering political project,\u201d Pedretti said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The conspirators used codenames to conceal their identities as they prepared for their mission: to plunge Brazil into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-418935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115192399372446072","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}