Brazil’s Supreme Court has sentenced 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.<\/p>\n
The court had earlier convicted him by a 4-1 vote in a landmark case.<\/p>\n
A majority of four judges found the 70-year-old guilty of plotting to claw back power after his defeat in October 2022 elections by leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.<\/p>\n
It makes Bolsonaro the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted for attacking democracy.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
There was ample evidence, she added, that Bolsonaro acted “with the purpose of eroding democracy and institutions”.<\/p>\n
Four judges 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has said that Bolsonaro’s conviction was “very surprising”.<\/p>\n
“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,” Mr Trump told reporters. “He was a good man.”<\/p>\n
After the sentencing was handed down, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticised the court’s ruling and said that Washington “will respond accordingly” to the conviction.<\/p>\n
“Brazil’s supreme court have unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Mr Rubio posted on X, adding that the United States – which has already imposed tariffs on South America’s largest economy over the trial – “will respond accordingly to this witch hunt”.<\/p>\n
Bolsonaro is currently under house arrest as part of another case.<\/p>\n
The verdict was not unanimous, with Justice Luiz Fux breaking with his peers yesterday by acquitting the former president of all charges.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Judge Fux’s vote also ignited a surge of righteous relief among the former president’s supporters, who hailed it as a vindication.<\/p>\n
“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 Judge Fux’s vote.<\/p>\n
Bolsonaro served a single term in office from 2019-2022.<\/p>\n
His 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.<\/p>\n
As he faced a close reelection campaign against Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2022 – an election that Mr Lula went on to win – Bolsonaro’s comments took on an increasingly messianic quality, raising concerns about his willingness to accept the results.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brazil’s Supreme Court has sentenced former president Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years and three months in prison for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-15538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}