Four defendants were brought before the court at one of the premises that were stormed on January 8 as part of the first proceedings related to the far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters’ disturbances, which the Brazilian Supreme Court began on Wednesday.
Each case will be decided by a single justice from the court’s 11 members; conviction requires a majority.
The first defendant, 51-year-old Aecio Pereira, has already been found guilty by the case’s main judge, Alexandre de Moraes, who has recommended that he be sentenced to 17 years in jail for his acts, which included invading the Senate floor while wearing a T-shirt that read “Military Intervention.”
With the trial set to reconvene on Thursday and nine justices remaining to decide, a second judge asked for a sentence that was significantly lighter—just 2.5 years.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s democratically elected government was forcefully overthrown, according to Moraes, who said that the rioters who also looted the Congress and the presidential palace carried out a “criminal invasion aimed at illegally seizing power via a military coup.”
The riots in Brasilia profoundly divided a country still reeling from veteran leftist Lula’s narrow victory over Bolsonaro in the presidential election of October 2022, and they inevitably drew comparisons to the takeover of the US Capitol by supporters of then-president Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, Bolsonaro’s political hero.
A week after Lula’s inauguration, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed the presidential palace out of anger over their candidate’s defeat to Lula. They overran security and demanded a military coup to remove the newly elected leader, who was not in Brasilia at the time.
They broke windows, threw furniture into fountains, damaged artwork, and turned the Senate’s main dais into a slide as they rampaged through the three buildings.
The four defendants, who range in age from 24 to 52, are charged with offenses such as an attempted coup, an armed criminal conspiracy, and a violent rebellion against the rule of law.
The most serious alleged offenses allegedly committed during the riots will be the subject of 232 cases that the Supreme Court plans to review.
Each of the first four accused could spend up to 30 years in prison. They have refuted the claims and stated that they thought the demonstrations would be peaceful.
