The Federal Supreme Court (STF) resumed this Wednesday (8) the judgment on the competence of the Military Justice to try military personnel for crimes committed during Law and Order (GLO) operations.
The trial is motivated by a lawsuit filed in 2013 by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) to challenge an excerpt from Complementary Law (LC) 97/1999. This LC expanded the competence of the Military Justice to judge crimes that are not directly linked to the typical functions of the Armed Forces, such as GLO operations, combating crime and guaranteeing the security of elections.
In 2018, when the case began to be judged, Minister Marco Aurélio Mello, now retired, voted to reject the action and understood that competence is constitutional. In today’s session, the trial was resumed with Justice Ricardo Lewandowski’s vote, in the opposite direction to that of his colleague. In his understanding, the complementary law created a “kind of privileged forum” for military personnel who participate in GLO operations.
“Public security configures an activity constitutionally assigned to other bodies, that is, to the different police forces, being exercised by members of the Armed Forces only on a subsidiary basis. That is, in terms of cooperation with the civil authorities, there is no mention of a crime committed in the exercise of office and because of it capable of attracting the competence of the Military Justice”, he decided.
After Lewandowski’s vote, the trial was adjourned. The date for the resumption has not been set.
