Moro: If PCC uses machine gun, ‘we have to use tank’ – 03/22/2023 – Power

Senator and former Minister of Justice Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR) said this Wednesday (22) that the plan of the criminal faction PCC (First Command of the Capital) against him and other authorities reveals “frightening audacity”, and stressed the need to tackle organized crime.

“I am alarmed by this escalation of organized crime that we are seeing in the country. We are watching, astonished, these attacks on the civilian population in Rio Grande do Norte. Today’s facts reveal a boldness that, if not greater, is equally frightening”, said in a speech on the Senate floor.

“I am not aware, in the history of the Republic, of planning by criminal organizations of this nature against the prosecutor in the case, who investigates the PCC, but especially against a senator of the Republic,” said Moro.

The senator also rescued a bill that he had presented when he was Minister of Justice and Public Security to “improve the protection of public agents, lawyers, witnesses, jurors, interpreters or experts who are involved in confronting organized crime.”

The text makes it a crime to plan an attack or a serious threat against authorities who work in the fight against organized crime and determines that the sentence must be served in a maximum security federal prison.

Moro asked colleagues for support to approve the proposal and said that the federal prison is today “the most effective instrument” against organized crime. “They [condenados] they know that being transferred there is the end of the line, which is why there is this retaliatory movement”, he said.

“If they come up with a knife, we have to use a revolver. If they use a revolver, we have to have a machine gun. If they have a machine gun, we have to have a tank, a combat vehicle. literal sense, but we need to fight back against organized crime.”

Unlike other oppositionists, Moro did not associate the discovery of the plan by the police with a statement by President Lula on Tuesday (21) in which the petista said that, when he was arrested, he wanted to take revenge on the then Lava Jato judge. But the senator said that kind of speech encourages “behaviors of influential minds that can put us in a vulnerable situation”.

As a minister in the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), Moro acted in the transfer of several leaders of the PCC, among them Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, Marcola, to the federal penitentiary system.

The main head of the criminal organization was transferred from the São Paulo state penitentiary system to the federal penitentiary in Brasília in February 2019. Months later, he went to a federal unit in Rondônia and then returned to the federal capital.

Federal deputy Rosângela Moro (União Brasil-SP), wife of Moro, followed the speech in the Senate plenary. After the former minister’s speech, senators from different parties expressed solidarity and demanded action against organized crime.

Opposition parliamentarians also tried to associate the alleged plan of the PCC with the speech of a day before by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) that he was thinking of revenge against the former Lava Jato judge when he was arrested in Curitiba.

The leader of the government in the Senate, Jaques Wagner (PT-BA), showed solidarity with the senator and congratulated the PF and the Ministry of Justice. The senator asked his colleagues not to lose focus and came out in defense of President Lula in the face of attacks after his speech the day before.

“[Lula] as a democrat, as a respecter of the rights and lives of human beings, who had a position that does no favors, fulfills his obligation. It wasn’t always like this. He does his duty to make a police not of the president, but a police of civil society, as it has to be.”

Moro said that he was advised of the PCC’s plan by the São Paulo Public Ministry in January and called Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG) – who took the case to the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Flávio Dino (PSB).

Moro thanked a number of authorities, such as the President of the Senate and Chamber, the Federal Police and the governors of São Paulo and Paraná, but did not mention the federal government.

The senator also mentioned São Paulo prosecutor Lincoln Gakiya, who has been involved in investigations into the PCC’s activities for years and was one of the faction’s targets.