15th September, 2023
A supporter of Jair Bolsonaro, the former President of Brazil has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 8, 2023, attempt to overthrow the government.
Aécio Lúcio Costa Pereira, a 51-year-old sanitation worker from São Paulo, becomes the first rioter to be sentenced for the incident in January.
Pereira, who was arrested inside Brazil’s Congress by the Senate police, also will have to pay a fine of about $6.1 million, the court said.
The judgment was handed down Thursday by Brazil’s Supreme Federal Tribunal, the country’s high court.
Supporters of the right-wing leader, copying the US Capitol attack, stormed the country’s Congress, Supreme Federal Tribunal and Planalto Presidential Palace to protest the election of leftist Lula da Silva while calling for a military intervention to overthrow him.
The violent demonstrators, inspired by Bolsonaro’s rhetoric during his campaign, clashed with the country’s military police and vandalised the buildings in Brazil’s capital of Brasília.
Pereira’s charges included engaging in an attempted coup, violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, armed criminal association, damage of heritage sites, and violence and serious threat against government property with the use of a flammable substance.
Brazil’s high court has 11 justices and the vote to convict Pereira was led by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, according to the news release.
Another six on the panel voted to convict Pereira on his five charges and agreed with the sentencing in full.
Cristiano Zanin, one of the justices on the panel who did not fully agree to the sentencing, had agreed with the charges but said that some of the aggregating factors should not apply and proposed a sentence of 15 years.
Earlier this year, Federal District Gov. Ibaneis Rocha said authorities had arrested more than 400 people who “will pay for the crimes committed.”
“Let this serve a lesson to the putschists, because all of the participants, financial backers and masterminds of this coup will be discovered and held to account for these terrorist attacks on our country,” Gleisi Hoffman, the president of Lula’s Worker’s Party said in a statement on X. “Long live Brazilian democracy!”