MST CPI summons Gonçalves Dias, former head of the GSI

Former Minister of the Institutional Security Office (GSI) Gonçalves Dias will have to provide clarifications to the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry of the Landless Rural Workers Movement, the MST’s CPI. This Tuesday (11) the commission approved the request for the ex-minister to be summoned to explain the actions of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) in monitoring land invasions that occurred during the current government.

Gonçalves Dias was one of the pivots in the installation of the CPMI on January 8th. The release of images from security cameras at the Planalto Palace showed that the former minister provided water to the demonstrators and that, supposedly, he did not act to curb the depredations that occurred inside the public building. After the episode, Gonçalves Dias asked for exoneration.

The ex-minister’s summons to the MST’s CPI is due to the fact that Abin, which is an organ of the Presidency of the Republic, was linked to the GSI until March of this year. Today, Abin is linked to the Civil House. The agency is responsible for providing the President of the Republic and his ministers with strategic, timely and reliable information and analysis, necessary for the decision-making process. According to the MST’s CPI rapporteur, Deputy Ricardo Salles (PL-SP), since 2009, Abin has been monitoring property invasion movements, which motivated the presentation of the summons.

Gonçalves Dias will have to explain omission and collusion with invasions

“The documentation that Abin has made available since 2009 shows a repetition of a modus operandi [dos movimentos de invasão de terra] and a series of situations that make this criminal conduct predictable for the government. Therefore, it is the duty of the intelligence agency to provide the other authorities that make up the national public security system with all the information”, justified Salles in the summons request. The deputy is also the rapporteur of the CPI of the MST.

The former minister will be questioned about his performance at the head of the GSI and, in particular, about the omission in the face of the 57 invasions of properties that have been registered since the beginning of the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).

“Having all of Abin’s apparatus, [o general] it will have to explain why it omitted itself in the face of the evident and growing invasions from January 1st. […] It will also have to justify the condescension, not to say connivance, of the authority of the Executive Power with these crimes”, emphasized Salles.

The hearing to hear former minister Gonçalves Dias still has no date set.