RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazilian police called for the indictment of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro over a 2022 "coup" plot to prevent current leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office.
A police statement said its investigators concluded that Bolsonaro and 36 others planned the "violent overthrow of the democratic state."
"Federal police concluded on Thursday the investigation into the existence of a criminal organisation that acted in a coordinated way in 2002 in an attempt to maintain the then-president in power," the statement said.
"The final report has been sent to the Supreme Court with the request that 37 individuals be indicted for the crimes of the violent overthrow of the democratic state, coup d'etat and criminal organisation," it said.
It is up to Brazil's attorney general to decide whether the allegations are substantiated enough to warrant criminal charges being laid. The charge of attempting a coup carries a sentence of up to 12 years in prison.
Bolsonaro vowed to fight the allegation, and accused the Supreme Court judge overseeing the case of overstepping the law.
"The fight begins at the Attorney General's office," Bolsonaro said on his X social media account.
The judge, Alexandre de Moraes, "leads the entire investigation, adjusts statements, arrests without charges, fishes for evidence and has a very creative advisory team. He does everything that the law does not say," Bolsonaro said.
According to police, the alleged plot was hatched in the final months of Bolsonaro's 2019-2022 presidency.
Lula, a left-winger who was previously president between 2003 and 2010, won October 2022 elections to succeed the far-right Bolsonaro.
Police have not so far drawn a direct link between the alleged plot and an insurrection that took place in Brasilia on January 8, 2023, when thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed the capital's presidential palace, the Congress building and the Supreme Court.
Investigations continue into that upheaval, which echoed scenes from the United States two years earlier, when supporters of Donald Trump protesting President Joe Biden's election win attacked the US Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021.
Bolsonaro has expressed admiration for Trump in the past.
The list of alleged co-conspirators in the Bolsonaro case included three elite soldiers and a police officer arrested on Tuesday for allegedly plotting to assassinate Lula and Moraes, in a separately announced case.
"I must be very grateful that I am alive. The attempt to poison me and Alckmin didn't work," said Lula on Thursday at an official ceremony, referring to Vice President Geraldo Alckmin.
"We need to build this country without persecution, incitement to hatred or discord," the president added.