This week, the STF concludes the trial of the PM-DF summit accused of omission on January 8

The session is being held in a virtual plenary session, where Ministers Cristiano Zanin, Carmen Lucia and Flavio Dino still have to vote. Voting has been open since last Friday, but only Moraes expressed his opinion.

The rapporteur of the criminal case voted to convict senior officers, including the commander-in-chief of the PDF at the time of the attacks, Fabio Augusto Vieira; Deputy commander at the time of the events, Klepter Rosa Gonçalves, who took over the position after Vieira’s departure on January 11, 2023.

Moraes also calls for the indictment of Jorge Naime Barreto and Paulo José Ferreira de Souza, respectively, head and deputy head of the Operations Department, and Marcelo Casimiro, who was commander of the First Regional Police Command, responsible for the Esplanada dos Ministerios region.

For the Minister, the five defendants are guilty of the four crimes with which the Prosecutor’s Office accused them: coup d’état, violent abrogation of the democratic rule of law, qualified damages and deterioration of listed property.

These are the same crimes that are also attributed to the so-called “executors” of the coup plotters and other officials, such as former President Jair Bolsonaro and former ministers in his government. In the case of the PM-DF officers, Moraes considered that there was a “common authorship due to intentional functional omissions,” characterized not by “accidental operational failures,” but by systematic behavior of failure to act to prevent coup acts.

For Moraes, there was “an intentional and organized act of omission, which began in the run-up to the second round of the 2022 presidential elections, and continued until the moment of the invasion and looting of the Tres Podres buildings.”

The Minister considered that the Prime Minister’s leadership was aware of the possibility of the actions planned for January 8, 2023, but still developed a “clearly inadequate” security plan, which left newly trained police officers and other agents on alert, rather than on guard.

“The operational oversight manifested itself in multiple ways: the use of insufficient personnel, the absence of specialized containment forces, the failure to install effective barriers, the use of police officers in training, and even the absence of commanders themselves in critical areas during attacks,” the rapporteur wrote.

Alexandre de Moraes voted to acquit two of the defendants in the case: Major Flavio Silvestre Alencar and Second Lieutenant Rafael Pereira Martins. They both led riot squads during the 2023 coup.

The minister considered Alencar “a tactical implementer who does not have independence in making strategic decisions.” Martins “coordinated effective recovery measures”, ensuring the reoccupation of the STF and the House of Representatives, according to the rapporteur.

“Although Flavio played an important operational role and omitted some measures, his role was that of a tactical enforcer, devoid of decision-making independence or real capacity for strategic planning,” he said.

In the case of Martins, his performance “on the contrary, reflects an attempt to reorganize and resist up to possible operational limits. Moreover, after the repositioning, the lieutenant coordinated effective recovery actions, including the reoccupation of the SS and the House of Representatives, with arrests and dispersal at various points on the Praça dos Três Poderes,” Moraes assessed in his vote.

In addition to the alleged failures in the security preparation for the coup actions, the complaint was also based on letters exchanged between the investigated persons, which indicated their agreement to benefit the government.