Brazil's Supreme Court convicts first defendants in pro-Bolsonaro riots

Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced two defendants to long prison sentences Thursday in the first judgements for rioting by followers of Brazil’s far-right ex-President Jair Bolsonaro. The charges included an attempted coup.

Aecio Pereira, 51, and Thiago Mathar, 43, were sentenced to 17 and 14 years in jail, respectively, for their roles in the disturbances that overran the seat of authority in Brasilia on 8 January.

Despite heavy security, hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters attacked the presidential palace, Congress, and the Supreme Court that day, wrecking the three institutions and calling on the military to depose leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

“This was no walk in the park. It was a Sunday of devastation, a day of infamy,” said Chief Justice Rosa Weber.

The riots rattled a nation still split by Lula’s close victory over Bolsonaro in Brazil’s presidential election in October 2022 and drew inescapable comparisons to the January 6, 2021 takeover of the US Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump – Bolsonaro’s political role model.

Both defendants maintained their innocence.

Pereira, a former employee of the municipal sanitation company in Sao Paulo, reportedly made an obscenity-laced cell phone video of himself at the Senate president’s table during the invasion, wearing a “Military Intervention” T-shirt and urging fellow Bolsonaro supporters to “take to the streets.”

According to the police investigation, Mathar was recorded on security camera footage accessing the presidential office suite, according to the case’s main judge, Alexandre de Moraes.

In both cases, eight of the court’s 11 judges ruled to convict on all five charges the defendants faced: violent uprising against the rule of law, attempted coup, armed criminal conspiracy, damaging a national heritage site and aggravated property destruction.

Three ruled to convict on only some of the charges, with lighter jail terms than those the pair were ultimately sentenced to.

The defendants had faced a maximum of 30 years in prison.

The court also imposed a collective fine of 30 million reais (around $6 million) on all those eventually convicted over the damages caused by the riots.

‘Overthrow the government’

Lawyers for Pereira told the court their client was unarmed and committed no acts of violence.

Defence attorney Sebastiao Coelho da Silva called the trial “politically motivated.”

Mathar’s lawyer told the court his client had only entered the presidential palace seeking shelter when clashes broke out between protesters and police.

“He wanted a better country, he wasn’t there to cause trouble,” he said.

The court ruled otherwise.

“The defendant… came here to participate in a coup, to overthrow a democratically elected government,” Moraes said in his ruling.

First of hundreds

In all, the Supreme Court plans to hear 232 cases involving the most serious alleged crimes committed during the riots.

The first trial, which opened Wednesday, is part of an initial batch of four cases before the high court. Justices began hearing the third Thursday afternoon.

Prosecutors are also investigating more than 1,000 others over the attacks, mostly on lesser charges that could be settled in plea bargains.

Investigators are meanwhile working to trace the financial backers behind the protests and establish whether police and army officers played a role. Seven Brasilia police commanders were arrested last month for dereliction of duty in connection with the riots.

Bolsonaro, who was in the United States at the time, faces investigation over accusations of inciting the riots.

The 68-year-old ex-army captain is also under investigation over various allegations of corruption and abuse of office.

In June, electoral authorities barred him from running for office for eight years over his unproven allegations that Brazil’s electronic voting system was vulnerable to large-scale fraud.

Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing.

“Some people are obsessed with trying to link me” to the events of January 8, he told newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo on Monday.