This Tuesday, November 18, Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court sentenced eight military personnel and a police officer for having planned the assassination of the current President, Lula da Silva, in a case linked to the trial that sentenced Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison.
The judges unanimously found nine of the ten defendants guilty, supporting the Attorney General’s Office who pointed out that the group planned the “most severe and violent actions” of the criminal organization, such as the plan to kill several authorities, including Lula da Silva.
Penalties range from one to 24 years in prison.
Retired general Estevam Cals Theophilo Gaspar de Oliveira was acquitted.
“It wasn’t just a walk in the park. It was a coup that would arrest and kill people, revoke the Constitution, citizenship and the free press. And this is not conjecture: it was written in the planning learned from these various public agents”, highlighted, justifying the vote, judge Flávio Dino, who with the other judges, followed the vote of the judge rapporteur of the process, Alexandre de Moraes.
Those convicted are Army colonels Bernardo Romão Corrêa Netto and Fabrício Moreira de Bastos, Army lieutenant colonels Hélio Ferreira Lima, Rafael Martins de Oliveira, Rodrigo Bezerra de Azevedo and Sérgio Ricardo Cavaliere de Medeiros, Federal Police agent Wladimir Matos Soares, Army colonel Márcio Nunes de Resende Jr. and Army lieutenant colonel Ronald Ferreira de Araújo Jr.
The first seven were convicted of attempted violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law, coup d’état, participation in an armed criminal organization, qualified damage and deterioration of property.
Márcio Nunes de Resende Jr. and Ronald Ferreira de Araújo Jr. “the panel reframed the crimes for which they were accused to those of criminal association and public incitement of animosity between the Armed Forces against the constituted Powers, of lesser gravity” indicated the STF.
The case is directly related to the process that led to the sentence handed down on September 11th against former President Jair Bolsonaro, found guilty of conspiring to try to prevent Lula da Silva from taking office after the victory of the current head of state in the October 2022 elections.
According to the Federal Police, the nine convicted defendants even planned to murder Lula da Silva, the current vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, and judge Alexandre de Moraes, at the time president of the Electoral Court.
The majority of those convicted were members of an elite group of the Brazilian Army and, according to the Public Ministry’s accusations, they even presented their plans to Bolsonaro himself in November 2022, when he was still in office.
Authorities had access to hundreds of messages that the convicts exchanged at the time, as well as documents with details of the plan, which would be carried out after the October 2022 elections.
This trial is part of the attempted coup d’état process that led to the sentence of 27 years and three months in prison imposed on September 11 against Jair Bolsonaro, who has been under house arrest since August for failing to comply with several precautionary measures imposed as part of the process.
Although his lawyers have a remote possibility of appealing this sentence, the STF has already rejected the first appeals and is preparing to order the execution of the sentence, which could be served in a penitentiary complex in Brasília.
However, his lawyers have already anticipated that they will request the maintenance of house arrest, justifying that Bolsonaro is 70 years old and in poor health.