The defense of the former Minister of Justice denied the (Supreme Court) on Wednesday (13) that he was silent during attacks on the headquarters of the three powers on January 8, 2023.
The lawyers stated that Torres, which occupied the head of the Federal District’s SSP-DF (Secretariat of Public Security), had no competence to “command or operationally mobilize the DF Military Police”.
“This force is uniquely, the planning and execution of disorder control actions and order maintenance. The role of SSP, in turn, is to strategically advise, integrate information and spread intelligence – as much as it was done,” he said.
The statements were made in the final allegations presented by Torres to the STF on Wednesday – the last day of the deadline for presentation of the final defense.
The defense of Torres countered the seven accusations made against the former Minister of Justice and Public Security of the government of ().
The team led by lawyer Eumar Novacki states that the coup draft found by the Federal Police at Torres’s house is one of the evidence of his innocence.
According to the lawyers, the document had distinct structure and content of the content discussed by Bolsonaro and the armed forces chiefs on December 7, 2022.
“This picture shows that no drafts have been debated with Anderson Torres, removing any claim that he participated in discussions or legal advice on these texts,” he says.
The defense of the former minister also says that the (Attorney General’s Office) accuses Torres of joining the coup content of the draft only because the apocryphal document was found in his home.
Lawyers say the draft was not passed on to third parties, they have no “any legal value” and measures were not even adopted to materialize the breach of normality.
“The acts of preparation or execution of a coup d’état have never been practiced by the accused, and, as a way, the mere thought is not punishable in relation to the imputations mentioned in the exordial accusatory,” he says.
“Said in another way: Anderson Torres did not surpass Rubicão,” he adds.
Torres was accused by the PGR of participating in the central core of the coup plot that planned a coup after Lula (PT) defeat Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential elections.
The central core is composed of the former minister, Bolsonaro and six others. All were accused of committing the crimes of coup d’état, attempted abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law, Armed Criminal Association, Qualified Damage of Public Patrimony and deterioration of listed heritage.
The maximum penalties added exceed 40 years. The expectation in the Supreme is that the trial will take place in September.
One part of the accusation concerns the Live promoted by the former president in July 2021. In the broadcast, Bolsonaro tried to discredit the electronic ballot boxes with conspiracy theories and false information.
The defense says that Torres was summoned to attend the meeting. In order not to make private comments about the ballot box, the former minister says he only read excerpts from a Federal Police report with recommendations to improve the voting system.
The PGR presents another argument. “From the transmission made, however, Anderson Torres did not appear to have only been uncomfortably submitted to a call. More than that, the defendant acted proactively and without any indication of coercion, weaving spontaneous observations, in order to endorse the presidential speech,” says prosecutor Paulo Gonet.
Torres also denied that he directed operations of the Federal Highway Police (PRF) to make it difficult to vote on Lula voters in the second round of the election.
He argues that there is no relationship between a list made to identify where candidates had more than 75% of the votes in the first round with the definition of police barriers in the states.
“It is, therefore, absolutely unreasonable that, given the casual identification of a blitz in a single municipality – hundreds listed – the deponent has hurried to formulate such a serious accusation, without any prior due diligence to understand the actual operational dynamics of the PRF,” he says.
