By Niamh McDermott
About 1,500 supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro were arrested after raids on the Capitol, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court Security forces cleared a protest encampment in front of the army headquarters in Brasilia, where some 3,000 Bolsonaro supporters had pitched tents. They rejected his defeat in October’s elections and called for military intervention and the resignation of the country’s new left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula condemned unrest as an ‘act of terrorism’ and said that invaders in Congress will be punished. Meanwhile, the wife of Bolsonaro, who denied the attack, said he was taken to a U.S. hospital on Monday with abdominal pain. He left Brazil for the US and refused to take part in the transfer of power to the new Lula. Thousands gathered in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, to demonstrate for democratic values after far-right mobs stormed government buildings in Brasilia.