STF Panel to Try Six Over 2022 Coup Plot This Week

Overview

• The First Panel opens hearings on December 9, with sessions also set for December 10, 16 and 17, to judge alleged roles in drafting a coup decree, monitoring authorities and interfering in the 2022 vote.
• The defendants are Silvinei Vasques, Fernando de Sousa Oliveira, Filipe Garcia Martins Pereira, Marcelo Costa Câmara, Marília Ferreira de Alencar and Mário Fernandes, who face PGR charges including attempted coup, violent abolition of the democratic order, armed criminal organization and qualified damage to protected property.
• Filipe Martins’s defense filed a motion to have the panel confirm its composition to include Minister Luiz Fux, arguing the judge-natural principle and consistency with earlier nuclei already judged.
• Separately, Minister Dias Toffoli flew on November 29 on a private jet with attorney Augusto Arruda Botelho, who acts in the Banco Master case that Toffoli later took under seal at the STF, centralizing oversight of the probe.
• Minister Gilmar Mendes’s injunction limiting impeachment moves against justices prompted political pushback, with Senate relator Weverton Rocha signaling a swift vote on a new impeachment law if the Court persists.