Anderson Torres used a fake airline ticket to justify his absence on January 8th, says the Attorney General's Office.

247 - Brazil's Attorney General's Office (PGR) has accused former Justice Minister Anderson Torres of presenting a false airline ticket to justify his absence on January 8, 2023, the date of the coup attempts in Brasília. At the time, Torres was the Secretary of Public Security for the Federal District. This information comes from [source missing]. g1.

According to the agency, the flight locator “MYIDST”, indicated by Torres, is not linked to his personal data and there are no records of tickets issued in his name on Gol flight G3-9460, on the Brasília-Orlando route. 

According to the Attorney General's Office, the falsification of the document represents an attempt to evade responsibility for the events of the 8th. Torres had claimed that the trip to the United States had been scheduled since July 2022 and that the ticket had been purchased in November. He took office as secretary on January 2, 2023, worked until the 6th, and stated that he would be on vacation starting on the 9th.

The defense of the former secretary argues that the replacement in the leadership of the department had already been foreseen and that the then-interim secretary, Fernando Oliveira, assumed the duties on the 6th. They also mentioned the existence of a previously prepared Integrated Action Plan (PAI), which would have been sufficient to prevent the events if it had been followed to the letter.

Despite these allegations, the Attorney General's Office maintains that warnings about the possibility of violent demonstrations were already being distributed to the Public Security Secretariat of the Federal District. On January 6th, the department received a report from the National Force with information about the risks, including mentions of the expression "Power Seizure" and the increase in the number of buses with demonstrators heading to Brasília. Even so, the police force on the 8th was considered insufficient, and there were delays in the security forces' response.

The Prosecutor's Office states that Anderson Torres already had a history of omissions in his position and that his conduct benefited the advancement of the coup attempts. The defense's argument, that his absence was merely a coincidence, was rejected by the Public Prosecutor's Office, which believes there was collusion or, at the very least, gross negligence.

The governor of the Federal District, Ibaneis Rocha, stated that he only learned of Torres' trip on January 7th, when he was already in the United States. Ibaneis claimed to have been "caught by surprise" by the absence and cited a breach of trust as the reason for dismissing the former secretary. An analysis of the governor's cell phone revealed that the substitute's contact information was shared by Torres only one day before the attacks, which was also cited by the Attorney General's Office as a sign of disregard for the position.