The Brazilian Supreme Court on Thursday sentenced a fan of disgraced former President Jair Bolsonaro to 17 years in prison for being part of the crowd who stormed the South American country’s Capitol back in January to protest the corrupt far right autocrat’s defeat against leftist then-former President Luiz Lula in the 2022 presidential election, the Associated Press reports.
Aécio Lúcio Costa Pereira, 51, who cops arrested on the day of the January 8th insurrection, is the first of several rioters facing time before the court to be sentenced. Pereira, charged with criminal association, staging a coup, violent attack on the rule of law, qualified damage, and destruction of public assets, was convicted on an 8-3 decision after being caught on tape waving a shirt and calling for a military coup in the middle of the Senate chamber while the place was sacked.
For those keeping score at home, Periera is only the first of an unknown number of Brazilian rioters to get tossed in the clink for their riot, but already his 17 year bid would rank third longest on the list of those who have been sentenced between the 2021 Washington, DC and 2023 Brasilia insurrections. Only Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio’s 22 years and Oath Keepers founder Stewie Rhodes’s 18 years are longer. In Brasilia there was no disruption to an ongoing transition as Lula had been sworn in a week earlier, no elected officials fled for their lives because it was on a Sunday so the Capitol was empty, and no cops or rioters were seriously hurt, let alone killed. Still, the very first Bolsonaro fan going down gets 17 years in what is surely a violent and squalid penal system.