A panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced yesterday former President Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years and three months in prison for plotting a coup to remain in power after losing the 2022 election, a powerful blow to the populist far-right movement he created.
The presumptive ruling by a majority of a panel of five justices in Brazil’s Supreme Court makes Bolsonaro the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted for attacking democracy.
“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 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.”
Three judges so far have voted to convict the former president 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, and one remains to vote.
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.
It is likely to further enrage Bolsonaro’s close ally US President Donald Trump, who has already called the case a “witch hunt” and slammed Brazil with tariff hikes, sanctions against the presiding judge, and the revocation of visas for most members of Brazil’s high court.
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