Releasing fangs on Women’s Day is a political act by Moraes – 09/03/2023 – Politics

The decision of Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), to release 149 prisoners for the coup acts of January 8, on International Women’s Day, was seen by specialists heard by the Sheet as an act with political symbolism, but legally grounded.

According to the criminalists, the minister was on time for the analysis of the temporary arrests of those accused of participating in actions against the democratic rule of law and the release took place two months after the attacks due to the exceptionality of the case, with a greater number of processes and evidence to be analyzed.

In all, 489 women were detained among 1,406 arrested on January 9, the day after the attacks on the headquarters of the three Powers in Brasília.

For criminal and women’s rights lawyer Maira Pinheiro, there is an “atypical volume of prisoners, evidence and procedural acts to be performed” that generates a queue and that, “to a certain extent, explains why it took two months for requests for freedom of these women were judged”.

Pinheiro says he considers that, despite being able to represent a political act, there are no problems in prioritizing a group that is already experiencing vulnerabilities both in violations of rights in penitentiaries and in the slowness of the analysis of cases by the State.

“I think the big issue for me is that there are several other women with very urgent humanitarian issues, who are also imprisoned for political reasons, for the criminalization of poverty, for the racial and class selectivity of the criminal justice system”, says the lawyer.

She claims that the Code of Criminal Procedure authorizes the judge to decide every 90 days on the need or not to maintain provisional arrests — that is, Moraes did not fail to meet the deadline for analyzing the manifestations of the PGR (Attorney General of the Republic) and release requests.

Moraes was with the President of the STF, Minister Rosa Weber, visiting the Women’s Penitentiary of the Federal District on Monday (6), to talk to the detainees after the coup attacks and check their conditions.

Priscila Pamela Santos, a criminal lawyer, says it is not possible to dissociate the political from the legal character in this case, and that there is symbolism in the massive liberation of women on that date. But she claims there is legal basis for the decision.

“Women, especially mothers, have the prerogative of house arrest with precautionary measures, since they are less dangerous than men, even though they are the majority of the Brazilian population”, says the criminalist.

She also claims that the release of 149 detainees in a single day occurs because the actions against them, part of all the processes of the coup acts, came in the same block of manifestations of the PGR, that is, because they are the same case, they would not need from a more rigorous individual analysis, especially since they were not organizers or sponsors of the crimes.

The decision to release the incarcerated women came with a statement released this Wednesday, in which the court says it has prioritized the analysis of the situation of women in the week of International Women’s Day and considered all requests for provisional release requested by prisoners after the acts.

With the decision, a total of 407 women have been released so far; another 82 remain in prison.

Before that, Moraes had already been determining the release of those detained for the attacks carried out in Brasília. On February 27 and 28, the magistrate ordered the release of 173 prisoners. They must wear electronic anklets and comply with other measures ordered by the minister, such as banning the use of social networks.

As the investigations did not identify the accused as the main financiers or executors of the acts, Moraes considered that they will be able to answer freely. The minister also considered that most of them have the status of first offender and minor children.