Brazilian authorities have sentenced a rioter to 17 years in prison over the storming of the capital earlier this year in an attempt to topple the left-wing government.
The suspect, 51-year-old Aecio Lucio Costa Pereira, worked as a sanitation personnel from Sao Paulo. He was the first rioter to face trial for the Jan. 8, 2023, dramatic assault on Latin America's largest democracy.
Brazil Sentences Rioter to 17 Years in Prison
There are hundreds of others who will find themselves in the dock in the next few months to face charges over what the country's Supreme Court president, Rosa Weber, called Brazil's "day of disgrace."
A majority of the court's 11 members on Thursday ruled that Pereira, a hardcore supporter of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, deliberately sought to overthrow the current leader, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, when he and several thousands of fellow radicals rioted in Brasilia eight days after Lula da Silva took the presidential seat.
The Supreme Court's Justice, Alexandre de Moraes, called for a 17-year sentence for Pereira and said that the "enemies of freedom" deserve exemplary punishment for their "dastardly putschist attack," as per The Guardian.
Additionally, six of Moraes' Supreme Court colleagues confirmed his judgment, which was praised by members of the Lula administration. In a statement, the president of Lula's Worker's Party (PT), Gleisi Hoffmann, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, "Long live Brazilian democracy!"
He added that the sentence should become a lesson to the putschists because he argued that all of the perpetrators of the incident would be discovered and held accountable for their actions. Weber added that the evidence that was presented to the court showed that the defendant and his fellow rioters stormed the Supreme Court, presidential palace, and Congress.
They were allegedly hoping to trigger a military intervention to unseat Lula da Silva from the presidential seat. When announcing the verdict on Thursday, Weber noted that he viewed the mob as trying to abolish the democratic rule of law to depose a legitimately elected government in Brazil.
Challenging Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's Election Win
Video footage at the Senate showed Pereira wearing a shirt calling for a military coup and recording a video of himself praising others who had also broken into the building during the coup attempt. That day, Brazilian authorities arrested nearly 1,500 people, but most of them have already been released, according to Yahoo News.
Eight out of the 11 justices of the Brazilian court ruled that the defendant committed five crimes; namely criminal association, staging a coup, violent attack on the rule of law, qualified damage, and destruction of public assets.
The mob that Pereira was a part of claimed that the election results that showed Lula da Silva winning were rigged. They smashed windows, threw furniture into fountains, and vandalized artwork as part of the riot.
Justice Cristiano Zanin on Thursday said that the objective of the rioters that day was to violently seize Brasilia and spread a criminal attack against the rule of law across the nation. The Supreme Court plans to hear 232 cases involving the most serious alleged crimes committed during the riot, said BBC.
