Brasília, December 19 (EFE). – The Supreme Court of Brazil has admitted a total of 78,242 trials in 2023, a figure that the president of the court, Luís Roberto Barroso, considered this Tuesday a “record” and attributed in part to the attempted coup in January.
Barroso led a ceremony marking the end of the court's operations this year and presented a report highlighting the just over 2,000 crimes accepted for processing as a result of the Jan. 8 coup attack.
On that day, a week after progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was inaugurated as president, thousands of far-right activists stormed the headquarters of the three branches of government in a frustrated attempt to overthrow the new government.
According to Barroso, this uprising contributed to an increase by just over 10% in the number of cases approved this year by the Supreme Court, whose seat was one of the targets of this coup attack.
Although he appreciated the rapid response of the judiciary to these events, which gave rise to criminal, civil and economic lawsuits, the judge emphasized the role of all institutions and civil society in rejecting an “authoritarian adventure” that “attacked” the democratic regime .
“No court alone would be able to contain this audacity and this was possible thanks to civil society, the political class and the press, which sided with the democratic institutions in a very relevant way,” he explained.
Twenty of the nearly 2,000 people accused of these incidents have already been sentenced to prison terms of up to 17 years, with 66 of them remaining in prison while the rest are facing justice in freedom.