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Brazil's STF indicts 7 others in “Parallel Abin” case

Brazil's STF indicts 7 others in “parallel Abin” case

Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) unanimously decided to indict seven more people in connection with a coup plot during the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

 

Unanimously, the panel made up of case rapporteur Alexandre de Moraes, and Justices Flávio Dino, Cármen Lúcia, Luiz Fux, and Cristiano Zanin admitted the complaint filed by the Attorney General's Office (PGR) against the so-called “core 4” of the plot, formed by Army personnel and a federal police officer who are accused of organizing disinformation actions to spread false news about the electoral process and virtual attacks on institutions and authorities through the structure of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin). The case became known as “Abin Paralela”.

Hence, defendants Ailton Gonçalves Moraes Barros (Army Reserve Major), Ângelo Martins Denicoli (Army Reserve Major); Giancarlo Gomes Rodrigues (Army Reserve Major Second Lieutenant), Guilherme Marques de Almeida (Army Lieutenant-Colonel); Reginaldo Vieira de Abreu (Army Colonel); Marcelo Araújo Bormevet (Federal Police); Carlos Cesar Moretzsohn Rocha (President of the Instituto Voto Legal) will be held to account for armed criminal organization, violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, coup d'état, qualified damage by violence, serious threat against the Union's patrimony, and deterioration of the property of the Union.

According to De Moraes, the PGR's filing “satisfactorily revealed” that the defendants contributed to the dissemination of false information about the electronic polls and against the electoral system through social networks. “There was the distribution, the production of fraudulent news attacking the Judiciary, the STF, the TSE, the fairness of the elections, [and] the issue of electronic ballot boxes. The defendants were part of this structure, within a criminal organization,” he said.

De Moraes also noted that the PGR pointed to the use of FirstMile monitoring software to illegally monitor Bolsonaro's challenges. The magistrate noted that the investigations found that one of the defendants carried out 887 illegal searches through the program. “The elements gathered indicate that the group infiltrated in Abin settled there at the beginning of Jair Bolsonaro's term, in 2018, and was the author of virtual attacks on various targets that went against interests,” he said.

He also pointed out that the targets of the virtual attacks were chosen from Bolsonaro's public statements. “The actions gain even more relevance when the consonance between the public speeches of Jair Messias Bolsonaro and the targets chosen by the cell infiltrated in Abin is observed.”

The judge also argued that the investigations showed the group's actions in carrying out virtual attacks on the then commander of the Army, General Freire Gomes, and the commander of the Air Force, Brigadier Batista Júnior, for not adhering to the coup proposal. “The instrumentalization of these messages is for the co-action of the general commander of the Army by other military men. Why is that? Because he refused to support the coup d'état”, he concluded.

Justice Cármen Lúcia also condemned the dissemination of disinformation and said that lies have become a commodity in social networks. “It is the lie as a commodity. It has become a good, it is paid for that, there are those who earn, there are those who do. The lie as a commodity to buy anti-democracy,” she underlined.

In case of conviction, the maximum sentence for the crimes is 30 years of imprisonment. So far, the charges against cores 1, 2, and 4 have been indicted, totaling 21 trials. In March of this year, unanimously, former president Jair Bolsonaro and seven other defendants were also indicted. The cases against cores 3 and 5 are still under analysis. (Source: Agencia Brazil)