Imaginary images

Living in the ICU for a full three months now, on life support, with little or no hope of making it – that’s the status of what may end up being hands down the biggest fake news story reported nationwide since justice Alexandre de Moraes started, four years ago, an endless quest, unprecedented in the world, to save Brazil from no less than fake news stories – as well as from “misinformation,” “digital militias,” “misinterpretation of accurate information,” and many other crimes against the nation. The news of the so-called attack, spined by the Brazilian media as a second nuclear explosion in Hiroshima, says that justice Moraes and his son were “assaulted” by a “pro-Bolsonaro businessman” at the Rome Airport on July 14. Well… First, what kind of assault was it? It was never clear. Reportedly, someone’s pair of glasses were knocked off, but perhaps they weren’t. It seems there was a heated exchange in the VIP lounge, but it wasn’t determined who insulted whose mother or even if someone’s mother was insulted at all. Allegedly, the justice suffered a verbal attack, which could or could not have been physical as well, but the accused claims nothing of the sort happened. In the end, the whole episode was built on inconsistencies.

Despite the absence of anything remotely resembling evidence, the assault was reported as an undisputable, clear-cut fact, which drove the news into a frenzy. The headline “Justice Moraes assaulted at the Rome Airport,” was reported, often word for word, by nearly all media outlets. No fact-checking agency cast the slightest doubt about what was being said. Furious editorials declared that the “assault” was an “attack on democracy.” In addition to the justice, commentators on Rede Globo said that the “rule of law,” the “institutions,” and the fight against “fascism,” “terrorism,” and “Bolsonarism” were also being targeted. The “VIP lounge crime,” according to the press, was an extension of the January 8 “coup.” In a fit of anger, the President of the Republic said that the accused were “wild animals” and that “these people must be exterminated.” The President of the Supreme Court personally assigned the case to the Federal Police; they seized cell phones and computers, searched the family’s car, and conducted interrogations at the police station, all as if Brazil was facing a new Jack the Ripper case.

From the beginning, all the bets of the media, Lula, the left, the Supreme Federal Court (STF), and the signatories of the “Letter to the Brazilians in Defense of the Rule of Law” were placed on the tapes recorded by the surveillance cameras at the Rome Airport. According to the press, this was the physical evidence of the “attack on justice Moraes.” One newspaper even published a comic strip story that portrayed, frame by frame, what had supposedly happened; one of the drawings shows the infamous glasses flying off justice Moraes’ son’s face. None of the accusers ever admitted the slightest possibility that things may not have unfolded exactly as described in the comic strip. Day after day, the media announced that the tapes had been preserved, that they were in the possession of the Italian police, that they definitively proved, beyond reasonable doubt, the assault on the justice – even though no one had seen the tapes. They were said to be on their way to the “Liaison” of the Federal Police in Rome. (In this story, it was discovered that taxpayers maintain a “Federal Police Liaison” in Rome; who would have thought?) The tapes were said to be on their way to Brazil, then it was said they had arrived in Brazil and were being examined by the authorities.

Curiously, as time went by, the press became less enthusiastic about the “Rome Airport images” story. The news became more sporadic, then rare, and finally, faint. The Workers’ Party (PT) just vanished as if they had nothing to do with the case. Lula no longer mentioned “wild animals.” Alexandre de Moraes himself never said much about the case; after the Federal Police received the tapes, he remained silent. How strange, isn’t it? They should all have been celebrating. So why weren’t they – especially when the “blessed” tapes had arrived in Brazil? If there had been an assault, as all of them claimed, and if there were recorded images of it, why on earth weren’t those being shown? Had the recording been released, there would have been no need for a comic strip in the papers once the images would materially prove that Moraes (or his son) had been attacked. What went wrong? If there was actual evidence, why wasn’t it brought forward? You know the answer from the beginning: the images were never released because they never proved any assault. In the end, the only scene recorded on tape was that of justice Moraes calling the accused “criminal” right to his face.

Normally, in this kind of situation, the story would be consigned to the archives, and everyone involved would gradually move on and avoid the topic as the media was trying to do. But, no – the “Moderating Power” decided to step into the spotlight and put on a show. Justice Dias Toffoli, who is managing the dispute on behalf of the whole “Supreme Court,” as Lula puts it, thought it would be a good idea to order the “confidentiality” of the images and grant more “time” for the Federal Police to examine the tapes. Seriously? Why all the secrecy? Would it be to prevent anyone from seeing justice Moraes being attacked by far-right radicals? To such a rhetorical question, Toffoli simply responds that the release of the images is “unnecessary.” Does any of this make sense to you? Also, why allow more “time” to determine what the recordings show? A photograph is a photograph: it shows precisely what the lens captured. If the attack is there, it happened, if it isn’t, it didn’t, period. You don’t need to join the Federal Police or be appointed to the Supreme Court to know what is in an image. If someone takes a picture of a chicken, an ostrich doesn’t suddenly appear in it instead. How many months of examination are justice Toffoli’s ballpark estimate for the police to figure out one way or the other?

The whole thing is terrible, but they managed to make it even worse. A document from the Federal Police was released, comprising 51 pages and an analysis of nearly four hours of video footage, consisting of 146 images from the Rome Airport – the tapes that have been awaited since July 15 and which, as the media assured the public, would positively prove the “attack on democracy” committed through the “assault” on Alexandre de Moraes. The report would not be taken seriously in any minimally civilized justice system on the planet; it merely serves to illustrate the quality of evidence produced by the criminal investigation services of the Supreme Court nowadays. The agent who analyzed the images wouldn’t be crazy enough to dare write the only plausible thing he could have: “The 146 video frames we examined show nothing.” He is in “the police force I command,” as the minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, says – and if he did something like that, Commander Dino would freeze his career until Judgment Day. Also, it wouldn’t be possible to state in the report that the images prove the alleged assault on Moraes. So, it was decided to present taxpayers with a document that could have been crafted in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. The Federal Police’s analysis, right from the beginning, contains a self-destructive device – it explicitly states that it is a “partial interpretation” of what the video shows. From there, there’s nothing left to save.

The Federal Police says that the accused, based on their “body language,” displayed a “hostile attitude” toward justice Moraes, which “contributed greatly” to an “apparent physical assault.” What is an “apparent assault”? Is it an assault or not, based on what’s in the video? The report doesn’t say. According to the agent responsible for it, “in their best judgment,” the accused “may have” insulted (“and even slandered”) the justice. In other words, it’s possible the accused simply didn’t do anything. Equally unclear is how it would be possible to know if an insult or slander was uttered once the video has no sound. There is no mention of lip-reading analysis or any other forensic technique throughout the document – it’s all based on impressions, “in their best judgment.” The agent mentions an “apparent slap.” He talks about a “sequence of gestures or verbalizations.” He points out a “posture that caught his attention.” He says the “apparent slap” that was supposedly delivered to the justice’s son “hit the face (or glasses)” of the victim. Whether the face or the glasses were hit, that also remains unsaid. As for the glasses specifically, the document states they may have been “displaced” from the face of the young man who was allegedly assaulted; they may have “come off” his “face.” Finally, the report says that, in the sequence of events, it was not possible to see exactly what happened because a garbage cart appears in the video and obscures the individuals involved. Now, is that all, in 51 pages? Yes, that’s all.

No criminal investigation, as far as we know, is meant to record what the police believe happened or to interpret what happened. Its sole legal function is to either present facts or state they couldn’t be determined. It’s also not appropriate to present, in the guise of expert evidence, procedures that haven’t undergone technical examination, as pointed out by the Brazilian Association of Federal Forensic Experts. “The images were not the subject of any forensic analysis or image enhancement or treatment techniques,” say the experts. In their assessment, the Federal Police’s report doesn’t meet the “impartiality criteria” and lacks, as required by law, “any confirmation bias.” Under normal circumstances, the assumptions made by the police regarding the supposed attack on democracy committed at the Rome Airport would never have been accepted even by a rookie judge. But this is Brazil in 2023. Written confessions of corruption, as has recently been seen in the case of the Odebrecht construction company, are considered “inadmissible” by the same justice Toffoli. But “hostile attitudes,” “apparent assaults,” and “apparent slaps” are included in an investigation being conducted in the Supreme Court – whose final verdict, when it comes, won’t be subject to any form of appeal.