��������

BRASILIA: Defense lawyers for former president Jair Bolsonaro asked Brazil’s Supreme Court for an acquittal during Wednesday’s closing arguments in a trial in which he is accused of attempting a coup.
Bolsonaro’s lawyers argued in a 197-page document submitted to the court that the far-right former leader is “innocent of all charges” and that an “absolute lack” of evidence was presented during the trial, which began in May.
Bolsonaro and seven collaborators are accused of attempting to hold power despite his 2022 electoral defeat by Brazil’s current leftist leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings in Brasilia on January 8, 2023, a week after Lula’s inauguration, alleging election fraud and calling on the military to intervene.
Bolsonaro, who led the Latin American country from 2019 to 2022, has maintained his innocence for months, calling any coup “abhorrent.”
He faces up to 40 years in prison if found guilty.
Bolsonaro was placed under house arrest in Brasilia this month for violating a ban on using social media to plead his case to the public.
The prosecutor’s office maintains that Bolsonaro led an “armed criminal organization” that orchestrated the coup attempt and was its main beneficiary.
The case file also focuses on meetings where draft decrees were allegedly presented, including those involving the possible imprisonment of officials such as Supreme Court judges.
However, the defense has stressed that “there is no way to convict” Bolsonaro based on the evidence presented in the case file, which they argued adequately demonstrated that he ordered the transition of power to Lula.
His lawyers have questioned the validity of the plea bargain handed to Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro’s former aide, on whose testimony many of the accusations are based.
Bolsonaro’s legal wranglings are at the center of fizzing diplomatic tensions between Brazil and the United States.
US President Donald Trump has called the trial a “witch hunt” and the US Treasury Department has sanctioned Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing Bolsonaro’s trial, in response.
Trump has also signed an executive order slapping 50 percent tariffs on many Brazilian imports, citing Bolsonaro’s “politically motivated persecution.”

KOROLYOV: After getting fined for her environmental protest against a road being built through a national park near Moscow, Irina Kuriseva is back to check on the construction.
“We only want to defend nature,” the 62-year-old told AFP at the Losiny Ostrov (Elk Island) park, a 129-square-kilometer nature reserve with hundreds of species of wildlife including endangered birds.
With dissident voices in Russia almost totally silenced and as the country presses on with its massive military offensive in Ukraine, environmental activism has become highly risky.
“The authorities have become completely indifferent” and laws have been “softened” in favor of polluters and property developers, said one activist, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In the outskirts of Moscow, the issue has become particularly acute as developers continue to build new homes and residents commuting to the capital find themselves stuck in traffic jams for hours.
In Korolyov, a town of 200,000 people, the authorities decided to build a highway that passes through the national park to ease congestion and give access to a new housing development.
In July, Kuriseva and five other activists blocked machinery spreading asphalt in the forest.
They were arrested by police and fined, after spending a night at the police station.
“We were interrogated like criminals who had killed someone,” said Kuriseva, a local resident.
Russian law prohibits construction in national parks but local authorities got around it by arguing that the project consisted of “repairs” to an existing road.
Dmitry Trunin, an environmental defense lawyer with more than 25 years of experience, said this argument amounted to “falsification and fraud.”
“There was never a road there,” he said, explaining that there had only been an unpaved track used by forest rangers which then became just a path through the forest.
Kuriseva said that “asphalt powder” was placed on the path in an attempt to classify it as a road.
The highway is due to be completed by March 2026 at a cost of 5.4 million euros ($6.3 million), according to the regional transport ministry.


Mikhail Rogov, a 36-year-old engineer who also took part in the protest with Kuriseva, said the judge was “smiling” to the defendants in court.
“She told us: ‘If you don’t want any problems, sign these papers, pay your fines and you’re free’,” he said.
The judge, Maria Loktionova, had in 2023 sentenced another environmental activist, Alexander Bakhtin, to six years in prison for three posts on social media criticizing the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
Despite the crackdown on dissent, activists opposed to the highway have sought to appeal to President Vladimir Putin to help their cause.
In June, around a thousand people queued outside the presidential administration building in Moscow to submit their complaints.
Putin visited the national park in 2010 and fed a baby elk with a bottle, telling reporters that nature was “a gift from God” that must be “protected.”
The tone from the Kremlin is very different in 2025.
“This is a question for the regional authorities. Don’t get the president involved,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in July when asked about the project by AFP.
Environmental protection “should not be a barrier to development and the comfort of the lives of citizens,” he said.
Trunin said it has become “harder and harder to defend the truth in court.”
“The power vertical takes decisions and law enforcement and monitoring bodies obey,” he said.