A man killed himself with a bomb outside Brazil’s supreme court in Brasília after trying to enter the building on Wednesday, officials have said, stirring security concerns before the country hosts global leaders from the Group of 20 major economies.
The blasts come five days before the G20 heads of state meet in Rio de Janeiro, followed by a state visit to Brasília, the capital, by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
The police identified the man as Francisco Wanderley Luiz, a 59-year-old locksmith from the southern state of Santa Catarina, where he had run for city council in 2020 receiving only 98 votes.
The first of two explosions went off at about 7:30 pm on Wednesday evening in a parking lot near the court building and a second blast came seconds later in front of the court, where Luiz’s body was found. The federal district vice-governor, Celina Leão, said preliminary information suggested he had killed himself after trying to enter the supreme court.
Security camera footage released by the TV network GloboNews showed a man walking up to a statue in the courtyard in front of the court and throw an object at the statue. He is then approached by a guard. The man then steps back, lights a device, and throws it towards the court building, but it does not appear to explode. He lights another one and throws it, resulting in an explosion under the building’s awning. The man then kneels, lights a third device, lies down, places the bomb under his head, and it detonates.
The explosions took place around the Plaza of the Three Powers, an iconic square in Brasília connecting the principal buildings of Brazil’s three branches of the federal government: the supreme court, the Congress and the presidential palace. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was not in the palace at the time of the explosions, a spokesperson said.
The plaza was the scene of riots on 8 January last year when supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro ransacked the buildings to protest his electoral defeat.
The federal police announced that they were investigating the case as a terrorist act due to its “political nature”, according to the director-general of the agency, Andrei Rodrigues.
On his social media, Luiz had frequently attacked the supreme court and “communists”, often posting images of himself with Brazil’s flag and wearing the national team shirt – symbols embraced by the far right in recent years. Moments before the attack, he posted on Facebook: “Shall we play? Federal Police, you have 72 hours to defuse the bomb at the house of those communist scum.”
He ran for city council in 2020 for Bolsonaro’s current party.
In a post on X, Bolsonaro wrote: “I regret and condemn any act of violence, like the tragic episode yesterday at the Plaza of the Three Powers,” stating that it was an “isolated incident, and, from what appears, caused by mental health issues of the person who, unfortunately, ended up passing away”.
According to the Brazilian press, the case will likely be investigated under the same inquiry addressing the attempted coup of January last year.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is responsible for the inquiry, said the explosions could not be treated as an “isolated incident”, but rather as something that started “back when the ‘hate cabinet’ [as the pro-Bolsonaro mobs became known] began to spread hate speech against institutions, against the supreme court”.
This is not the first attempt at an explosive attack in Brazil’s capital. On 24 December 2022 – just days before the riots – the police discovered and defused an explosive device in a truck loaded with aviation fuel near Brasília’s international airport. Three Bolsonaro supporters were identified and convicted. One of them admitted that the goal was to prevent Lula’s inauguration.
It is still unclear whether Luiz acted alone or had assistance. He is believed to have been living in a town near Brasília since July, and explosives were also found at the house where he had been staying.
After the explosions, police deployed a bomb squad with an explosive disposal robot to the square to investigate the blasts. According to the police, there was a belt with unactivated explosives on Luiz’s body, along with a detonator. In total, the police said, six explosive devices were deactivated in the Plaza area.
