Ex-Brazilian president Bolsonaro sentenced to 27 years in jail over coup plot

Brasilia, Brazil: Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to more than 27 years in prison after a Supreme Court majority convicted him of plotting a coup to remain in power after losing the 2022 election, a powerful blow to the populist far-right movement he created.

The ruling by four of five justices makes Bolsonaro the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted for attacking democracy. He was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison.

The case concerns the US Capitol riot-style insurrection attempt that took place on January 8, 2023, when thousands of the former leader’s supporters stormed the country’s capital, taking over the Congress, Presidential Palace and the Supreme Court after Bolsonaro’s narrow loss to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the October 2022 election.

Authorities previously also determined that Bolsonaro had full knowledge of a plot to assassinate Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes after the election.

“This criminal case is almost a meeting between Brazil and its past, its present, and its future,” Justice Carmen Lucia said before she voted to convict Bolsonaro of attempting a coup, a reference to previous attempts, successful and otherwise, to overthrow democracy in the country’s history.

There was ample evidence, she added, that Bolsonaro acted “with the purpose of eroding democracy and institutions”.

Justice Cristiano Zanin was the last of the judges to vote making the verdict final, before the panel determines a sentence. Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing and accused the court of political persecution.

“[Bolsonaro] publicly incited the population to act against the [country’s] institutions, gave his approval for the planning of violent acts… The ex-president was aware of all the actions of the [accomplices]. In the group’s eyes he was the leader to be followed,” said Zanin.

Judges voted to convict Bolsonaro of five crimes: taking part in an armed criminal organisation, attempting to violently abolish democracy, organising a coup, and damaging government property and protected cultural assets. One judge acquitted him of all charges.

Lawyers for Bolsonaro have said they would appeal the verdict to the full Supreme Court of 11 justices.

The four justices also ruled to convict Bolsonaro’s seven allies, including five military officers.

The conviction of Bolsonaro, a former Army captain who never hid his admiration for the military dictatorship that killed hundreds of Brazilians between 1964 and 1985, echoes legal condemnations this year for far-right leaders elsewhere, including France’s Marine Le Pen and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte.

US President Donald Trump said he was surprised that Bolsonaro was convicted.

“Well, I watched that trial. I know him pretty well. I thought he was a good president of Brazil. And it’s very surprising that that could happen. That’s very much like they tried to do with me, but they didn’t get away with it at all,” Trump told reporters at a doorstop on Friday (AEST). He added: “But I can always say this. I knew him as president of Brazil. He was a good man.”

Trump has already previously called the case against Bolsonaro a “witch hunt” and slammed Brazil with 50 per cent tariffs, sanctions against the presiding judge, and the revocation of visas for most members of Brazil’s high court.

The historic significance of the case goes way beyond Bolsonaro and his movement, said Carlos Fico, a historian who studies Brazil’s military at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

The verdict marks the first time since Brazil became a republic almost 140 years ago that military officials have been punished for attempting to overthrow democracy.

It was not unanimous, with Justice Luiz Fux breaking with his peers by acquitting the former president of all charges.

That single vote could open a path to challenges to the ruling, potentially bringing the trial’s conclusion closer to the run-up of the 2026 presidential elections, in which Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he is a candidate despite being barred from running for office.

The sentence doesn’t mean he will immediately go to prison. The court panel now has up to 60 days to publish the ruling. Once it does, Bolsonaro’s lawyers have five days to file motions for clarification.

Rafael Mafei, lawyer and law professor at University of São Paulo and ESPM university, said Bolsonaro and his co-conspirators could present a motion for clarification, a quick appeal that usually doesn’t change the decision.

“It’s unlikely, but not impossible, that appeals to the full Supreme Court would change the outcome for any of the defendants. Unless the Supreme Court changes the interpretation it has been adopting since 2018. But of course, the defences will try because they should,” Mafei said.

Fux’s vote also ignited a surge of righteous relief among the former president’s supporters, who hailed it as a vindication.

“When coherence and a sense of justice prevail over vengeance and lies, there is no room for cruel persecution or biased judgments,” Michelle Bolsonaro, the former president’s wife, posted after Fux’s vote.

“The trial is a wake-up call for the Armed Forces,” Fico said. “They must be realising that something has changed, given that there was never any punishment before, and now there is.”

Bolsonaro’s conviction marks the nadir in his trajectory from the back benches of Congress to forge a powerful conservative coalition that tested the limits of the country’s young democratic institutions.

His political journey began in the 1980s as a city legislator after a brief career as an army paratrooper. He went on to be elected as a congressman in Brasilia, where he quickly became known for his defence of authoritarian-era policies.

His reputation as a firebrand was fuelled by interviews such as one in which he argued that Brazil would only change “on the day that we break out in civil war here and do the job that the military regime didn’t do: killing 30,000”.

While long dismissed as a fringe player, he refined his message to play up anti-corruption and pro-family values themes. These found fertile ground as mass protests erupted across Brazil in 2014 amid the sprawling “car wash” bribery scandal that implicated hundreds of politicians – including Lula , whose conviction was later annulled.

Burning anti-establishment anger helped lay the path for his successful 2018 presidential run, with dozens of far-right and conservative politicians elected on his coattails. They have reshaped Congress into an enduring obstacle to Lula’s progressive agenda.

Bolsonaro’s presidency was marked by intense scepticism about the pandemic and vaccines and his embrace of informal mining and land-clearing for cattle grazing, pushing deforestation rates in the Amazon rainforest to record highs.

As he faced a close re-election campaign against Lula in 2022 – an election that Lula went on to win – Bolsonaro’s comments took on an increasingly messianic quality, raising concerns about his willingness to accept the results.

“I have three alternatives for my future: being arrested, killed or victory,” he said, in remarks to a meeting of evangelical leaders in 2021. “No man on Earth will threaten me.”

In 2023, Brazil’s electoral court, which oversees elections, barred him from public office until 2030 for venting unfounded claims about Brazil’s electronic voting system.

Bolsonaro’s conviction and its durability will now emerge as a powerful test for the strategy that Brazil’s highest-ranking judges have adopted to protect the country’s democracy against what they describe as dangerous attacks by the far-right.

Their targets included social media posts that they say spread disinformation about the electoral system, as well as politicians and activists. Sending a former president and his allies to jail for planning a coup amounts to its culmination.

The cases were largely led by the commanding figure of Justice Alexandre de Moraes, appointed to the court by a conservative president in 2017, whose stance against Bolsonaro and his allies was celebrated by the left and denounced by the right as political persecution.

“They want to get me out of the political game next year,” Bolsonaro told Reuters in June, referring to the 2026 election in which Lula is likely to seek a fourth term. “Without me in the race, Lula could beat anyone.”

Reuters, AP

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