The Superior Military Court (STM) will distribute the processes regarding the possible loss of rank of military personnel convicted by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in the coup plot to different ministers, without a single rapporteur for all cases. The president of the Court, Maria Elizabeth Rocha, stated that the expectation is that the trials will begin in 2026, after the representations are sent by the Military Public Ministry, scheduled for February.
According to Maria Elizabeth, the cases involving former president Jair Bolsonaro, former GSI minister General Augusto Heleno, former Minister of Defense Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, former head of the Navy Admiral Almir Garnier and former Minister of the Civil House General Braga Netto will be distributed freely among the members of the court, except for her, as she holds the presidency.
— No one will evaluate the crime that has already been judged by the STF. We are going to analyze whether or not the military are worthy to continue serving as officers — Elizabeth explained in a coffee with journalists this Monday.
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The minister highlighted that the moment of distribution will be monitored by the press and acknowledged that the trials may have tight scores, with the possibility of some convicts not losing their patent.
— As individual representation is provided by the Public Ministry, each case can go to a different minister — he said.
Still according to Elizabeth, the function of the STM is to analyze, after the final decision by the Supreme Court, whether the soldier, whether active or retired, has “the conditions to continue belonging to the force he chose, or not”.
Of the 15 ministers expected to participate in the trial, five were nominated by Bolsonaro. Furthermore, some of them were contemporaries and worked with some of the officers who will now have to judge. Minister General Lourival Silva, for example, was a colleague in the Army High Command of Paulo Sérgio and Braga Netto. Ministers Admirals Leonardo Puntel, Celso Nazareth and Cláudio Viveiros made up the Admiralty — the top of the Navy — at the same time as Garnier.
The president of the STM also defended the creation of a code of conduct for ministers of higher courts and said that the measure is not “cheap moralism”, but rather a “civic duty”. The proposal is being studied by the president of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Edson Fachin, and generated repercussions behind the scenes of the Judiciary last week — amid the controversy surrounding a trip by Minister Dias Toffoli.
Maria Elizabeth was one of the presidents of a higher court consulted by Fachin about the idea, which is inspired by Germany’s constitutional court, the equivalent of the European country’s Supreme Court. According to the president of the STM, the initiative has the support of all the other presidents of the other Courts and does not aim to punish members of the judiciary.
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— It is important to have an ethical code, which makes it very clear what conduct should be adopted when carrying out the profession. We honor the toga that we wear, it is not cheap moralism, but a civic duty — he said.
The minister states that there needs to be “clarity” about the functioning of the Judiciary and the conduct of its members who, according to her, “cannot fail”. Maria Elizabeth also states that these rules must cover, for example, the participation of ministers in private events, lectures and the analysis of causes in which relatives are involved.
— The code is essential for the judiciary to know how to behave even in dubious cases. The judge could not judge cases in which his relatives and similar lawyers are lawyers. These are republican rules – he said.
