On January 8, clashes broke out between police and Bolsonaro supporters in front of the Planalto Palace in Brasilia.TON MOLINA (AFP)
Computer scientist and civil servant Aécio Lucio Costa Pereira, 51, who entered the Brazilian Senate with a Bolsonaro mob wearing a T-shirt that read “Federal Military Intervention,” became the first person convicted of the attempted coup. état against the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Supreme Court justices voted nine to two to impose a 17-year prison sentence on him for five crimes, including violent subversion of the rule of law and coup, as well as damage to property. The two dissenting judges considered that the defendant had not committed a coup crime, which is why they called for lighter sentences. Both were appointed by former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is under investigation in the case.
The defendant followed the trial from prison, where he has been detained since January 8th. He wanted to be present in the hall of the Supreme Court in Brasilia, two steps from the headquarters of the Congress and the Presidency, but the investigator of the case, Judge Alexandre de Moraes, did not allow this. Moraes has become a hero for half of Brazil, which sees his work over the last year as crucial to saving Brazilian democracy from Bolsonaro attacks.
Costa Pereira, the first of four defendants the Supreme Court planned to try this week, pleaded not guilty. He assures that he did not cause any damage and that he merely took part in a demonstration that got out of control.
Aécio Lucio Costa Pereira takes a selfie in the Brazilian Senate during the attack on the three powers on January 8.
In their arguments, several judges argued that the defendant had incriminated himself by recording and broadcasting three videos in which he threatened to defecate in the Senate and bathe in one of the ponds, by bragging to his friends and told them that Don Don’t be afraid, everything would be okay. The worst attack on Brazilian democracy since the collapse of the dictatorship. Lula is also in his third term. And more than 200 of those accused of the coup remain in prison awaiting trial, in addition to the thousands who have been released on parole.
With this first sentence, the judges of the Supreme Court wanted to send a strong signal that they should impose an exemplary punishment in order to deter possible imitators in the future. The dissenting judges favored convicting him of four crimes instead of five and imposing lighter sentences.
This first conviction opens a decisive phase for the more than 1,300 defendants who marched this Sunday on the headquarters of the Three Powers in the belief that by creating a situation of anarchy in the capital they could force the military to… To take power and democratically overthrow the president. elected, Lula. They failed.
The trial is also crucial for polarized Brazil because the final outcome of the judicial process will determine, at an institutional level, whether the Bolsonaro mob’s actions were an attempted coup, as the majority of the court claimed in its first decision ( although there would be no heavy weapons or troop mobilization) or mere vandalism against the state’s most important institutions.