Brazil’s Supreme Court opens trial of former president and seven aides
The First Panel of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court will begin trying former President Jair Bolsonaro and seven former aides on Tuesday (Sep. 2), all of whom are accused by the Attorney General’s Office of attempting to carry out a coup d’état.
The five Justices of the First Panel - Alexandre de Moraes, Cristiano Zanin, Luiz Fux, Cármen Lúcia, and Flávio Dino - will rule based on the evidence presented by the prosecution and the defense during the investigation.
In the prosecution’s case, Attorney General Paulo Gonet presented his closing arguments - the final version of the facts investigated - on July 15, when he requested the conviction of the eight defendants for five crimes, with combined maximum sentences that could exceed 40 years in prison.
All were charged with the following crimes:
- Leading or participating in an armed criminal organization
- Attempting to violently abolish the democratic rule of law
- Plotting a coup d’état
- Causing damage aggravated by violence and serious threat
- Deteriorating federal public property
Gonet described what the Attorney General’s Office considers to be several typical criminal acts - that is, actions or omissions by the defendants that constitute a crime. However, in the prosecutor’s view, these are complex offenses, committed with the intention of avoiding detection or proof.
For this reason, Gonet argues that the classification of the crimes is equally complex, as it is based on a series of behaviors carried out over an extended period, rather than on isolated acts.
“An attempted coup d’état, a breach of the essential elements of the democratic rule of law, and the destruction of the independence of the branches of government cannot be understood without connecting multiple facts and events occurring over an extended period, which together constitute the behavior punishable by law,” explains the attorney general in his indictment.
January 8
To establish the nature of the crimes, Gonet emphasized the significance of the anti-democratic attacks on January 8, 2023, when supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, unhappy with his defeat in the 2022 election, invaded and vandalized the headquarters of the Three Branches of Government.
“The dramatic event helped reframe a whole series of past events that previously seemed unconnected,” the attorney general wrote in his closing arguments.
“Acts that, until then, might have seemed reprehensible only from a moral or electoral standpoint were placed within a larger plan of institutional rupture,” he adds.
Gonet asserts that the violent acts were the result of a coup plot and occurred only because Jair Bolsonaro encouraged them. He expressed support for the camps that, since the end of the election, had been calling for military intervention - an incitement that is itself a crime under the Penal Code.
The Attorney General presents, for example, messages exchanged by Colonel Mauro Fernandes, former executive secretary of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, in which the military officer appears to act as a liaison between the Planalto presidential palace and the leaders of the protesters camped in front of the Army Headquarters in Brasília.
In conversations, the word “barbecue,” according to Gonet, is used as a code for the coup. One of the messages received by Fernandes, from a camp leader, says, for example: “We’re going to the Esplanade, to the Esplanade demonstration, OK? Yeah... and I need to talk to you urgently about... that barbecue. Yeah... if you got any guidance there.”
Such communications, according to Gonet, make it “clear that the movements of Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s supporters were not spontaneous, but the result of prior guidance from the criminal organization.”
The prosecutor also cites the visit of General Walter Braga Netto, former Minister of the Civil House and Defense and Bolsonaro’s running mate in 2022, to the Army HQ camp on January 4, 2023, where he conveyed a message of hope regarding the coup.
With respect to Bolsonaro specifically, the prosecutor states that the events of January 8 occurred only because of the “social unrest” fueled by the former president, who, since mid-2021, had been casting doubt on the electoral process with unsubstantiated attacks on the functioning of electronic voting machines.
Gonet describes what he considers coordinated statements by Bolsonaro and asserts that a “sequence of acts - threatening public statements, spreading falsehoods about the electoral system, repeated attacks on Supreme Court ministers, coordination with military allies, and manipulation of investigations - constitute a mechanism of institutional delegitimization, whose central objective was the early rejection of the election results.”
From that point, the prosecutor notes that Bolsonaro began coordinating with the criminal coup organization to keep his supporters dissatisfied in advance with the election results.
“This escalation of discursive aggression was neither episodic nor improvised. It was part of a plan aimed at progressively eroding public confidence in democratic institutions,” the prosecutor said.
According to Gonet, messages exchanged by the defendants included instructions on how protesters could use railings as ladders and fire hoses in a coordinated manner during the alleged “barbecue.”
The Attorney General declares that it is not necessary for the defendants to have been physically present at the Three Powers Square to be held responsible for the violent acts and damage caused to public buildings, which was estimated at over BRL 30 million.
Defense
Defense attorneys generally argue that Gonet did not present any documentary evidence placing their clients at the scene of the crimes committed on January 8, 2023. In their view, the prosecutor’s failure to specify the exact act of damage directly committed against public buildings prevents the defendants from being found guilty of the events of that day.
Bolsonaro’s legal team, for example, claims that the prosecutor’s narrative describes an “imaginary coup” and argues that, even if the former president had entertained, in a sort of “brainstorm,” the idea of an institutional rupture, the Attorney General’s Office has not presented any conclusive evidence linking Bolsonaro to the anti-democratic acts of January 8.
The defendants in Nucleus 1 of the coup plot, who will be tried starting this Tuesday, are:
- Jair Bolsonaro – former President of the Republic;
- Alexandre Ramagem – former director of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin);
- Almir Garnier – former Navy commander;
- Anderson Torres – former Minister of Justice and former Secretary of Security of the Federal District;
- Augusto Heleno – former Minister of Institutional Security (GSI);
- Paulo Sérgio Nogueira – former Minister of Defense;
- Walter Braga Netto – former minister under Bolsonaro and vice-presidential candidate in the 2022 election;
- Mauro Cid – former aide to Bolsonaro.
