Bolsonari radical sentenced to 17 years in prison on charges of invading Brazil’s congress

Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) sentenced this Thursday afternoon, September 14, to 17 years in prison for the first defendant tried for the brutal attacks carried out in Brasília on January 8 by radical followers of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Aesio Lucio Costa Pereira was the first to be convicted of a huge list of 1,365 defendants accused of the same crimes who will be tried individually in the coming weeks.

Eight STF judges voted to convict Aesiu of the five crimes he is accused of, including attempted coup and criminal organization, resulting in a full sentence. Three other judges, two of whom were appointed by Jair Bolsonaro, rejected the coup attempt and agreed only to a sentence for looting government property, which would have been equivalent to a two-year suspended sentence, but they were defeated.

Aesio was one of thousands of extremist followers of Jair Bolsonaro who, on January 8, a week after Lula da Silva was inaugurated as the new president, marched through Brasilia, invading and destroying Congress, the presidential palace and the court itself. Protesters demanded military intervention to overthrow Lula and return former President Jair Bolsonaro to power, this time as dictator.

The radical Bolsonist, convicted this Thursday, was one of the participants in the invasion of Congress and, like most defendants, showed on his social networks images that helped prove his crimes and convict him. Esio, who remains in prison in Brasilia, stressed that day that he was sitting in the chair of the Congress president and, wearing a shirt with the words “military intervention now,” called on the population to take to the streets. ask the military to carry out a coup.