A panel of Brazilian Supreme Court justices has sentenced former president Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years and three months in prison after convicting him of attempting a coup to remain in office despite his 2022 electoral defeat.
Bolsonaro, who has always denied any wrongdoing, can appeal the ruling. He is currently under house arrest in Brasilia.
Four of the five justices reviewing the case in the panel found the far-right politician guilty on five counts, in a ruling that will deepen political divisions and was expected to prompt a backlash from the US government. It makes Bolsonaro the first former Brazilian president to be convicted of attempting a coup.
While the charges carried a maximum sentence of 43 years in prison, the court took into account the 70-year-old Bolsonaro’s age and ongoing health problems in determining the punishment.
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The case stems from an investigation into the January 8th, 2023 insurrection attempt in Brasilia, where thousands of his supporters stormed federal buildings while urging the military to oust newly elected president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva a week after he took office.
The US government immediately criticised the ruling and warned it would respond.
US president Donald Trump said he was “very unhappy” with the conviction. Speaking to reporters as he departed the White House, he said he had always found Bolsonaro to be “outstanding”.
And later, US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on his X account that Mr Trump’s government “will respond accordingly to this witch hunt”.
Mr Trump’s administration had already applied a 50 per cent tariff on imported Brazilian goods, which it said was in reaction to the process against Bolsonaro.
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.
The sentence does not 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 Sao Paulo and ESPM University, said Bolsonaro and his co-conspirators could present a motion for clarification, a quick appeal that usually does not 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,” he said.
“Unless the Supreme Court changes the interpretation it has been adopting since 2018. But of course, the defences will try, because they should.”
One of the justices, Carmen Lucia, said she was convinced by the evidence the Attorney General’s Office presented against the former president.
“He is the instigator, the leader of an organisation that orchestrated every possible move to maintain or seize power,” she said.
Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the former president’s eldest son, said on X that the conviction was a “supreme persecution” and that history would show they were on the right side.
The trial has been followed by a divided society, with people backing the process against the former president, while others still support him. Some have taken to the streets to back the far-right leader who contends he is being politically persecuted.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, said on Tuesday that Bolsonaro was the leader of a coup plot and of a criminal organisation, and voted in favour of convicting him.
Thomas Traumann, a former government minister and political consultant based in Rio de Janeiro, said it is “the most important day for Brazil’s democracy since the 1988 constitution was approved”.
“It is the first time a former president, a former defence minister and a former military commander are punished for trying to stop an elected government from taking office,” Mr Traumann said.
“The threats of the American government make this decision of the Supreme Court an even braver one. The relations between the two countries will get worse and maybe get better once the Trump administration understands there are limits to the will it wants to impose,” he added.
Justice Luis Fux, cast the lone acquittal vote.
“No one can be punished for cogitation,” Mr Fux said in a written statement.
“A coup d’état does not result from isolated acts or individual demonstrations lacking coordination, but rather from the actions of organised groups, equipped with resources and strategic capacity to confront and replace the incumbent power.”
Judge Fux called the January 8th, 2023 uprising – when hardcore Bolsonaristas ransacked the supreme court, presidential palace and congress – a “barbaric act” that had caused “damage of an Amazonian-scale”. But the judge, who also controversially argued that the court lacked jurisdiction over the case, claimed there was no proof Bolsonaro was to blame for inciting the riots.
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 after a brief career as an army paratrooper, when he became a city lawmaker in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1980s. He went on to be elected as a congressman in Brasilia, where he quickly became known for his defence of authoritarian-era policies in the early years of Brazil’s democracy.
His reputation as a firebrand was fueled by interviews like 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”. – Agencies
