‘I’M GOING TO GET YOU’

Bolsonaro Ally Surrenders After Lobbing Grenade at Cops

Brazilian politician Roberto Jefferson gave himself up after a tense, hours-long standoff over his threats to Supreme Court justices.

A Brazilian politician is in police custody after a fraught standoff saw him fire a rifle and throw more than one grenade at arresting officers, according to the Associated Press. Roberto Jefferson, an ally of President Jair Bolsonaro, surrendered Sunday evening, having non-fatally wounded two law enforcement officers in rural Rio de Janeiro state while resisting arrest. (A Reuters report attributed the officers’ injuries to shrapnel from a grenade lobbed by Jefferson.) “I didn’t shoot anyone to hit them. No one,” Jefferson said in a video, according to the AP. “I shot their car and near them. There were four of them, they ran, I said, ‘Get out, because I’m going get you. I’m setting my example, I’m leaving my seed planted: resist oppression, resist tyranny. God bless Brazil.” The former congressman’s preemptive arrest was ordered by Alexandre de Moraes, one of the country’s Supreme Court justices, who found that Jefferson had repeatedly violated the terms of his house arrest order, culminating in a video released to social media Friday threatening and insulting Justice Cármen Lúcia as political tensions mount in Brazil before an Oct. 30 runoff vote between Bolsonaro and his leftist challenger, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.