What did Jair Bolsonaro’s trial reveal about an attempted coup in Brazil?
Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, has been jailed for 27 years. File picture: Eraldo Peres/AP
Brazil’s supreme court has made Jair Bolsonaro the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted for attempting a coup.
The 70-year-old far-right leader claims he is the victim of political persecution, but three out of five judges concluded on Thursday that it was sufficiently proven that Bolsonaro and his close allies attempted to overturn the 2022 election, which he lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Seven other members of his administration were also convicted, including senior military officers – something also unprecedented in a country that endured a brutal two-decade military dictatorship (1964–85).
After months of investigation, the federal police and the attorney general concluded that a “criminal organisation” led by Bolsonaro carried out a long list of different ways to keep the former paratrooper in power at all costs.
The plot included a plan to assassinate Lula, his vice-president and Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who in 2022 was presiding over the electoral court. After the election, Lula and Moraes were closely monitored by special forces soldiers.
According to investigators, the murderous plot was abandoned only because Bolsonaro managed to win over just one of the three armed forces chiefs, the navy commander, while the heads of the air force and the army refused to join.
The climax of the power-grab attempt was the riot on 8 January 2023, a week after Lula took office, when hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters ransacked the presidential palace, congress and supreme court in the capital, Brasília.
The only judge to acquit Bolsonaro was Luiz Fux, who argued that the prosecution had failed to prove the former president’s guilt. He also contended that the trial should be annulled, saying the supreme court was not the proper venue and endorsing a defence claim that, because the investigation generated about 70 terabytes of documents, Bolsonaro’s lawyers had been unable to review all the case materials.
Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years and three months.
Bolsonaro has been under house arrest since 4 August, accused of trying to intimidate the supreme court’s judges through a campaign led by his son Eduardo Bolsonaro in the US that resulted in tariffs and sanctions imposed by Donald Trump.
The former president still has the right to appeal, although the margin of his conviction makes it unlikely it will be overturned. Once the appeals are concluded, probably in October or November, the justices will decide where he will serve his sentence.
Given his recurring health problems, linked to a stabbing during the 2018 campaign, Bolsonaro will probably remain under house arrest, in a hospital or in a special unit inside a barracks or police facility.
Even before this week’s conviction, Bolsonaro was already barred from forthcoming elections due to two previous rulings by the electoral court, one for attacking the voting system and another for using the presidency for electoral purposes.
Brazil’s largely conservative congress, however, may vote on an amnesty bill for him and hundreds of those convicted over the 8 January riot. Justices have already deemed the proposal unconstitutional, so if it passes, a judicial battle is expected.
Meanwhile, figures on the far right – including Bolsonaro’s politician sons and his wife – are battling to decide who will be the candidate to take on the leftist president Lula, who has announced his intention to run in the 2026 elections.
Trump had previously criticised the case against Bolsonaro and used it as one of the justifications for his 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports, but most Brazilian legal experts agree there was substantial evidence for conviction and that due process was observed.
After Thursday’s verdict, the US president told reporters he was “very unhappy” with the conviction and that he’d always found Bolsonaro to be “outstanding”. US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on X that Washington would “respond accordingly to this witch hunt”.
Brazil’s foreign ministry called Rubio’s comment a threat that “attacks Brazilian authority and ignores the facts and the compelling evidence in the records”. The ministry said Brazilian democracy would not be intimidated by the US.
Trump had already revoked the visas of Moraes and other justices of Brazil’s supreme court. Moraes was also targeted with Magnitsky sanctions, generally reserved for perpetrators of severe human rights violations.
