{"id":198420,"date":"2025-12-18T14:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/198420\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T14:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:20:07","slug":"brazilian-congress-passes-bill-to-cut-jair-bolsonaros-27-year-prison-term-jair-bolsonaro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/198420\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazilian congress passes bill to cut Jair Bolsonaro\u2019s 27-year prison term | Jair Bolsonaro"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brazil\u2019s congress has approved a bill to reduce the prison term of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president who was sentenced<\/a> to more than 27 years in prison for masterminding an attempted coup to overturn the 2022 elections.<\/p>\n

Approved last week by the lower house and late on Wednesday by the senate, the bill now goes to President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva<\/a>, who has 15 working days to sign or veto it.<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s leftist president \u2013 who, investigations showed, was the target of an assassination plan<\/a> as part of the coup plot \u2013 has already indicated he is likely to veto the bill, but that decision would probably be overturned afterwards by the largely conservative congress.<\/p>\n

Jair Bolsonaro leaving house arrest temporarily in September for a medical appointment. Photograph: Diego Herculano\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Legal experts estimate the bill will reduce Bolsonaro\u2019s time in a closed regime, currently a minimum of six years, to just over two, depending on sentence reduction mechanisms such as good behaviour or reading books.<\/p>\n

The far-right leader is already serving his sentence<\/a> in a special cell at the federal police headquarters in Bras\u00edlia, and his lawyers are seeking supreme court authorisation for him to undergo hernia surgery.<\/p>\n

Although the legislation falls far short of the full amnesty Bolsonaro and his sons had been demanding, its approval is being celebrated by the former president\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t exactly what we wanted \u2026 but it\u2019s what was possible,\u201d posted<\/a> the senator Fl\u00e1vio Bolsonaro, the former president\u2019s son and, for now, the family\u2019s choice to take on Lula in the 2026 election.<\/p>\n

The bill reduces time in prison by combining the sentences for two different crimes \u2013 such as \u201cattempted coup\u201d and \u201cviolent abolition of the democratic rule of law\u201d \u2013 but counting only the offence with the higher sentence.<\/p>\n

Opposition senators celebrate the approval of the bill. Photograph: Andr\u00e9 Borges\/EPA<\/p>\n

It benefits not only Bolsonaro but all of his aides, including high-ranking military officers who, for the first time<\/a>, were also convicted of attempting a coup in Brazil, as well as hundreds of people who ransacked the capital, Bras\u00edlia, on 8 January 2023.<\/p>\n

For that reason, the approval is being seen as a significant setback for those who had widely celebrated the convictions as a sign of democratic progress<\/a> in Brazil. A recent opinion poll showed<\/a> that most Brazilians opposed reducing the sentences.<\/p>\n

The journalist and writer Miriam Leit\u00e3o, a prominent political analyst, described the bill\u2019s passage as the reopening of Brazil\u2019s \u201chistoric cycle of impunity\u201d: \u201c2025 was set to go down in history as the year in which Brazil punished coup plotters for the first time, but the bill \u2026 threatens to make the country repeat the past,\u201d she wrote<\/a> in her column for O Globo newspaper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brazil\u2019s congress has approved a bill to reduce the prison term of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-198420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198420","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=198420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}