Brazil’s Supreme Court orders pretrial detention of head of Brazilian Labor Party (PTB)

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Former congressman and national president of the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB) Roberto Jefferson was arrested on Friday morning (13) by the Federal Police of Rio de Janeiro, after an order granted by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

Jefferson was in the city of Levy Gasparian in Rio de Janeiro. According to the politician’s lawyer, Luiz Gustavo Pereira da Cunha, he received medical treatment at home. He did not disclose what the illness was.

On Friday, Federal Supreme Court (STF) Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the pre-trial detention of the politician for alleged participation in a digital criminal organization to attack democracy. A search and seizure warrant for his home was also granted.

Read also: Analysis – Brazil’s Supreme Court is setting precedents potentially dangerous to democracy

In the order, Moraes considers that preventive detention is justified by the offenses of defamation, slander, libel, incitement to commit a crime, an apology for crime, criminal association, and slanderous accusation.

In his decision, Moraes listed several posts made by the accused on social networks. Jefferson has said that the STF is determined to bring Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s PT back to the presidency and that the only way out would be the intervention of the armed forces. That is why, the former parliamentarian said, STF Justices are against the printed ballot.

“The elections are rigged. They don’t want the vote to be published or printed…because they don’t want public control,” Roberto Jefferson said in one of his publications.

The STF Justice stated that “the Federal Constitution does not allow the dissemination of ideas contrary to the constitutional order and the democratic state, nor does it allow the holding of demonstrations on social networks to break the rule of law.”

The request for arrest came from the Federal Police, which established Roberto Jefferson’s involvement in attacks on Supreme Court Justices.

Moraes also determined the seizure of Jefferson’s computers, tablets, cell phones, and other electronic devices and access to storage devices (including cell phones, hard drives, seized USB sticks, materials stored in the cloud).

In addition, Moraes decided to block accounts on social networks, focusing on Twitter, reasoning that the act “is necessary for the interruption of criminal hate speech and is contrary to democratic institutions and elections, in relation to the profile @BobJeffRoadKing.”

In the same profile, Roberto Jefferson returned shortly before his arrest to attack Moraes on the warrant. In the post, he said that the Supreme Court was repeating the procedure in Venezuela, where conservatives had been punished to “enthrone the communists.”

MAY LULA DA SILVA DO WHAT OTHERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO?

Jefferson’s arrest comes a day after leftist Lula de Sliva called sitting president Jair Bolsonaro a genocidal ruler.

The former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leader of the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT), criticized President Jair Bolsonaro and assured that he would try to prevent the country from being governed by a person guilty of “genocide”.

Brazil “does not deserve a genocidal government, as it is today. The humiliation that Brazil is suffering before the world is unbearable,” Lula said in an inflammatory speech yesterday at the launch of a book about his trial in São Paulo.

According to the Brazilian Criminal Code, it is a crime to slander or defame the President of the Republic, the President of the Federal Senate, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, or the President of the Federal Supreme Court by imputing to them a fact defined as a crime or damaging to their reputation, which consists of violating the dignity or decency of a person.

PROSECUTOR GENERAL ARAS SILENT ON REQUEST TO ARREST FORMER CONGRESSMAN

The Federal Prosecutor General (PGR), Augusto Aras, was informed more than a week ago about the request to arrest of  Roberto Jefferson but let the deadline pass without commenting.

The Prosecutor General’s Office was asked on Friday morning to clarify why it had not come forward. The office reported that “there was indeed a manifestation of the PGR. In due course.” Since the petition is secret, no further information was given.

BRAZILIAN LABOR PARTY

Despite the name suggesting a left-leaning trade union party, the PTB joined a coalition led by the centrist/center-right PSDB.

The party has recently shown strong support for the government of Jair Bolsonaro, presenting policies from a more right-wing angle, in addition to affiliating federal deputy Daniel Silveira, known for making favorable references to AI-5, the decree by the military dictatorship that eviscerated congress and the supreme court.