Supreme Court accepts charges against another seven coup plotters
The first of Brazil’s Supreme Court decided on Tuesday (May 6) to accept the charges targeting seven more accused of orchestrating a coup plot during the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
The five justices unanimously accepted the prosecutor-general’s complaint against the fourth group of the accused—made up of Army agents and a federal police officer said to have coordinated efforts to spread fake news about the electoral process and online attacks on institutions through the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN). The case became known as “Parallel ABIN.”
In the hearing, the defense lawyers refuted the accusations and called for the charges to be rejected.
The votes were cast by Justices Alexandre de Moraes, rapporteur of the case, Flávio Dino, Cármen Lúcia, Luiz Fux, and Cristiano Zanin.
The accused are:
- Ailton Gonçalves Moraes Barros, retired Army major;
- Ângelo Martins Denicoli, retired major;
- Giancarlo Gomes Rodrigues, sub-lieutenant;
- Guilherme Marques de Almeida, lieutenant colonel;
- Reginaldo Vieira de Abreu, colonel;
- Marcelo Araújo Bormevet, federal police officer; and
- Carlos Cesar Moretzsohn Rocha, chair of the Voto Legal Institute.
They will be tried for five crimes—armed criminal organization, violent abolition of the democratic state of law, coup d’état, damage aggravated by violence, and serious threat to and deterioration of federal property.
Rapporteur
The ruling was decided following the vote of the rapporteur, Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The prosecutor-general’s accusation, he said, “satisfactorily described” how the accused contributed to spreading false news about voting machines and the electoral system on social networks.
“The distribution and production of fraudulent news targeted the Judiciary, the Supreme Court, the Superior Electoral Court, the fairness of the elections, and the voting machines. The accused operated within the structure of a criminal organization,” he declared.
He also said that the charges pointed to the use of a monitoring program named FirstMile to illegally monitor onetime President Bolsonaro’s opponents. Justice Moraes added that the probes found that one of the accused carried out 887 illegal searches using the program.
“The evidence gathered indicates that the infiltrated group installed itself at ABIN early in Jair Bolsonaro’s mandate, in 2018, and carried out online attacks on various targets that contradicted their interests,” he said.
The rapporteur also pointed out that the targets of the attacks were picked following Bolsonaro’s public statements.
“The actions gain even more relevance when we observe the consonance between Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s public speeches and the targets chosen by the infiltrated cell,” he added.
Justice Moraes further argued that the investigations also show that the group carried out online attacks on then Army Commander General Freire Gomes and Air Force Commander Brigadier Batista Júnior, for not adhering to the coup proposal.
“These messages aimed to coerce the general commander of the Army through other military personnel. Why? Because he refused to the coup,” he concluded.
Justice Cármen Lúcia also condemned the dissemination of disinformation and said that lies have become a commodity on social networks.
“Lies have become a commodity. You pay for it. Some people do it, as there’s profit to be had. They’re lies as a commodity to undermine democracy,” she said.
Now that the accusation has been accepted, criminal proceedings will be opened, and the lawyers will have a chance to name witnesses and request the production of new evidence.
Defendants
So far, the charges against groups one, two, and four have been accepted—totaling 21 defendants, including former President Jair Bolsonaro.
The complaint targeting groups three and five are yet to be examined.
