The command of the Military Police of the Federal District (PMDF), accused of negligence in the undemocratic acts that occurred on January 8, 2023, in the Esplanada dos Ministérios, will be judged on Friday (28/11) by the First Commission of the Federal Supreme Court (STF). There are seven accused soldiers, of different ranks.
The group will be tried by the STF over charges of negligence on January 8, when the headquarters of the three powers were invaded and vandalized. In accepting a complaint from the Public Prosecutor’s Office (PGR) against the officers, Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Supreme Court, considered that the seven soldiers had “improperly and criminally used the structure of the military police in the Federal District with the aim of breaking the democratic order, through the violent seizure of the buildings of the authorities of the Republic.”
Moraes considered that there is “important evidence that the defendants were aware of the actual circumstances of the danger, as evidenced by the extensive intelligence activity carried out by the military police in the Federal District, such that all the high-ranking officers who were reported had prior knowledge of the dangers inherent in the attacks of January 8, 2023.”
Who are the targets and what did each one of them do in the PDF:
- Colonel Fabio Augusto Vieira: Commander-in-Chief of the People’s Defense Forces on January 8, 2023;
- Colonel Klepter Rosa Gonsalves: Deputy Commander of the PDF on the same date and appointed to the position of Commander-in-Chief on the following 15 February;
- Colonel Jorge Eduardo Naimi Barreto: Commander of the PDF Operations Department on 1/8 but was on leave on 3 January;
- Colonel Paulo José Ferreira de Souza Bezerra: Commander of the organization’s operations department, replacing Naima on 1/8;
- Colonel Marcelo Casimiro Vasconcelos Rodriguez: Head of the First Regional Police Command of the PDF on January 8, 2023;
- Major Flavio Silvestre de Alencar: Disposed of on January 8, 2023; and
- Lieutenant Rafael Pereira Martinez: Disposed of on 1/8.
The seven soldiers will be sentenced in a virtual public hearing. The trial begins on Friday (11/28) and continues until December 5, when ministers will have a week to register their votes. At the opening of the virtual plenary session, the rapporteur of the procedure (in this case, Minister Alexandre de Moraes) enters the vote into the system. The plenary session is then open so that other ministers can vote for or against the rapporteur’s vote.
All defendants will be tried for crimes of violent abolition of the democratic rule of law; coup; Qualifying damage for violence and serious threat of use of an inflammable substance against Union property and serious injury to the victim; deterioration of inscribed heritage; Violation of the contractual duty of the guarantor and interference with the standard.
The summit trial was rescheduled twice, in August this year.
PGR complaint
When accepting the complaint filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (PGR), in February 2024, Moraes said that the “inappropriate omission” of which the officers were accused made it possible to carry out the attacks against the headquarters of the three forces.
Ministers Carmen Lucía, Cristiano Zanin and Louise Fox followed Moraes’ vote. In the complaint, the PGR highlighted that there was “deep ideological contamination on the part of the accused PDF officers, who showed themselves to be supporters of the coup and conspiracy theories about election fraud.”