The rapporteur asks for a confrontation between deponents after General Dutra’s response

This Wednesday (14), upon hearing the first responses from the head of the Planalto Military Command on January 8th, General Gustavo Henrique Dutra de Menezes, the rapporteur of the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI) that investigates the actions of the day 8, Senator Eliziane Gama (PSD-MA), asked for a confrontation between deponents. On the occasion, Dutra presented a different version of what was said by three other deponents about the plans to withdraw protesters who were camped in front of the Army HQ in Brasília.

The senator showed excerpts from the statements given to the CPI regarding the January 8th acts of the Legislative Chamber of the Federal District (CLDF) in which the former DF Security Secretary, Anderson Torres; the Undersecretary of Integrated Operations, Colonel Cíntia Queiroz de Castro; and the former commander of the Operations Department of the Military Police of the Federal District (PMDF), Colonel Jorge Eduardo Naime, accuse the Planalto Military Command of failing to execute plans to remove the protesters.

Colonel Cíntia Queiroz said that the PM received authorization from the Planalto Military Command only to combat illegal trade within the camp, but did not allow any action against the tents or the protesters.

The former secretary, Anderson Torres, said that as the area belonged exclusively to the Army, the Security secretariat tried twice to demobilize the camp, but was prevented by the Planalto Command.

Colonel Naime said that on December 29, 2022, he placed more than 500 police officers at the disposal of the Army to remove the camp, but after planning, the operation would have been canceled by the Army. The same would also have happened on December 12th, when the colonel says he mobilized more than 300 police officers for the same purpose.

Today, at CPMI, General Dutra said that these operations mentioned by other witnesses were not even planned.

“The three (Torres, Naime and Cíntia) are in the same alignment […] I read the plans (from the Army Command) and the feeling I have is that they held a meeting, it was not formalized in a transparent and clear way and when it arrived to do the operational part, you disauthorized it”, he said Eliziane Gama for General Dutra.

“I believe that we should have confrontations in this Commission because it is impressive how drastically some deponents conflict”, added the CPMI rapporteur, expressing irritation with the military’s responses.