One of those arrested by the Federal Police suspected of planning to kill Senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil-SP) was released in 2020 by decision of the then Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Marco Aurélio Mello, who retired last year.
At the time, Marco Aurélio granted an injunction in habeas corpus filed by the defense of Valter Lima Nascimento, known as Guinho. With the decision, Nascimento was allowed to leave prison.
He had been arrested red-handed in June 2014 in a drug trafficking case. He had the prison converted into preventive and stayed in jail until April 2015, when the Court of Justice of São Paulo (TJ-SP) granted habeas corpus to remove the arrest.
The conviction in the first instance came out in October 2016. He was sentenced to 20 years and 5 months in prison, in a closed initial regime, for drug trafficking and association for trafficking.
Justice determined that he could not appeal in freedom and implemented his provisional arrest. The amount of drugs involved in the case weighed in on the decision: 401 kilos of cocaine base paste.
The arrest warrant was issued in October 2017.
In October 2018, Justice Marco Aurélio dismissed Nascimento’s arrest for the first time, when analyzing a defense request. Deliberation of the First Panel of the STF, however, overturned the decision in March 2019, and Nascimento was arrested again.
Defense appeals were rejected in the second instance of São Paulo Justice and in the Superior Court of Justice (STJ).
The lawyers argued that Nascimento was provisionally serving his sentence, and stated that his health was “debilitated” because of a diagnosis of a herniated disc. They also cited the risk of him contracting Covid-19 in prison, in addition to the fact that the defendant is first-time offender, has a fixed residence and work.
When analyzing the defense’s new request, in 2020, Marco Aurélio released Nascimento for the second time. The magistrate based his decision on the time he spent in prison without a final conviction: 1 year, 4 months and 2 days, which would constitute “excessive time”.
This second decision by Marco Aurélio was also overturned by the First Panel of the STF, in September 2020.
Valter Nascimento was one of nine arrested by the PF this Wednesday (22) suspected of participating in a criminal organization that intended to carry out attacks against public servants and authorities, including homicides and extortion through kidnapping.
A CNN found that Senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR), a former Lava Jato judge and former Minister of Justice, was one of the targets of the criminal group. When Minister of Justice, he was responsible for transferring leaders of the criminal faction to federal penitentiaries.
This Wednesday’s operation (22) issued seven preventive arrest warrants and four temporary arrest warrants, in addition to 21 search and seizure warrants.
The nine suspects arrested –six men and three women– were in São Paulo, and the other two wanted with an issued arrest warrant are from Paraná.
Source: CNN Brasil
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