Brasilia (EFE).- Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday sentenced the last five defendants in the attempted coup orchestrated by former President Jair Bolsonaro to between eight and 26 years in prison. Bolsonaro is already serving a 27-year sentence for what the court called a “serious attack on democracy.”
The hearing held in the First Chamber of the Supreme Court was the last of the process referring to the conspiracy that, according to the court’s conclusion, the far-right leader hatched to try to retain power after being defeated at the polls by the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in the October 2022 elections.
In total, and with varying degrees of participation, the court found 29 of the 31 defendants guilty of that plot, sentencing them to between one and 27 years in prison.
Adding up the sentences from this trial, which included the former president himself, several ex-ministers and former heads of the Armed Forces, exceeds 400 years in prison.
The highest was precisely for Bolsonaro, whom the court considered the “leader” of that plot, which began even before the 2022 elections and culminated in the violent assault on the headquarters of the three branches of the State on January 8, 2023, a week after Lula’s inauguration.
ilipe Martins and his international links
Among the convicts sentenced this Tuesday in the coup plot, Filipe Martins, a far-right activist very close to Bolsonaro, who served as an advisor on International Affairs to the Presidency between 2019 and 2022, had special relevance and was sentenced to 21 years.
Martins was considered one of the main links between Brazilian radicals and the American far-right, especially with Steve Bannon, a former collaborator of President Donald Trump, and according to the court, he was one of the drafters of a draft decree that Bolsonaro did not sign but proposed to annul the elections.
The text, discovered in the investigation, also ordered an intervention by the electoral Justice system and the arrest of several magistrates, including Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who later became the rapporteur of this case for sedition.
This Tuesday, reserve Army general Mario Fernandes was also found guilty and sentenced to 26 years. He was accused of weaving a plan to assassinate Lula, the current vice president, Geraldo Alkmin, and Judge Moraes himself, who at the time headed the electoral court.
Additional Defendants and Their Sentences
The other inmates sentenced this Tuesday are Colonel Marcelo Costa Câmara (21 years), the former director of the Highway Police Silvinei Vasques (24 years) and the former head of Intelligence of the Ministry of Justice Marília Ferreira de Alencar (8 years).
According to the Attorney General’s Office, which acted as the prosecuting party, everyone had some kind of responsibility in the conspiracy and their sentences were set based on the degree of participation of each one.
The sentence against Bolsonaro was declared final on November 25th, when the former president began to serve his sentence in the facilities of the Federal Police where he had been held for several days.
Bolsonaro was already under house arrest for having violated a series of precautionary measures imposed within the framework of the process and was transferred to the Federal Police after he tried to damage an electronic ankle bracelet that was part of those restrictions.
Faced with that condemnation, the far right, which along with centrist parties dominates the Parliament, is promoting a bill that proposes to reduce the sentences, which has been approved by the Chamber of Deputies, but encounters strong resistance in the Senate.
