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 Brazil’s justice minister has vowed there will be no amnesty for radical supporters of rightwing former president Jair Bolsonaro who last month stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace in Brasília. Pledging to crack down on far-right extremism, Flávio Dino said in an interview: “This is so serious for Brazilian democracy that the response has to be firm and respect the principle of proportionality: when you have a serious crime, you must have a firm response.” The insurrection on January 8 was not an “isolated event” but a symptom of wider extremism in Latin America’s largest nation, he said. More than 1,000 people were arrested following the riots, when thousands of pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators stormed and vandalised the government and judicial institutions. They claimed the October election in which leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated the rightwing populist was rigged. “Our expectation is that these people will be convicted,” said Dino, rejecting any possibility the government could offer an amnesty to calm political tensions. “[An amnesty] has neither been considered nor will it occur, exactly because it would only encourage other similar acts in Brazil and in other countries,” he said. Opposition politicians had proposed such a scheme late last year following post-election violence by Bolsonaro supporters. Since Lula’s election there had been a series of events aimed at disrupting the new government, including an alleged plot to bomb Brasília airport in December, Dino said. Two people have been arrested in connection with the plot, while a third suspect is missing. “Those planning the bombing were also seeking long-distance rifle training. On their mobile phones, there were conversations in which one of them was seeking information on weapons suitable for long-distance shooting. There is a long dialogue with instructors about this,” said Dino. A lawyer and former governor of the northeastern state of Maranhão, Dino described the January violence as “unquestionably” a coup attempt. The rioters had hoped their movement would spread across the nation and spur the military to intervene and overthrow Lula, he said.