The former president Jair Bolsonaro He was sentenced this Thursday to 27 years and three months in jail for having tried to give a coup d’etat, in an unpublished trial in Brazil just over a year of the presidential elections.
Bolsonaro, 70, was sentenced for led an armed criminal organization that tried to hold on to power after losing the elections in 2022 against the president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The coup plot, which would have included a plan to kill Lula, would not have been executed due to lack of support from the military dome.
By four votes to one of the judges in charge of the case, seven coacked, including former ministers and military chiefs.
“An armed criminal organization made up of the defendants, who must be convicted of the factual circumstances that I consider proven,” said the last judge to vote, Cristiano Zanin.
Bolsonaroin house arrest since August, he did not participate in the hearings in the court when claiming health problems.
“They call a process whose result everyone already knew before it began,” Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the former president, reacted in X.
One of the first reactions came from the White House.
US President Donald Trump labeled the condemnation of “very surprise” and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said that the United States “will consequently respond to” unfair “sentence.
Trump has already applied punitive tariffs to Brazilian products on the argument that there is a “witch hunt” against his ally.
Amnesty?
With the coup plan, “Brazil almost returned to a dictatorship,” he said when he expressed his vote on Tuesday the Rapporteur of the case, Alexandre de Moraes, alleged target also of the alleged murder plan.
Judge Flávio Dino, also favorable to a conviction, warned for his part that the crimes tried are not susceptible to an amnesty, at a time when Bolsonarism pushes his leader for a legislative forgiveness.
A countercurrent of his colleagues, Judge Luiz Fux warned against a “political trial” to Bolsonaro and bowed to acquit him due to lack of evidence.
The trial “enters history as one of the saddest pages of Brazilian justice,” the Bolsonarist leader reacted in the Chamber of Deputies, Luciano Zucco.
“Bolsonaro in prison!”
The Brazilian society, polarized, is divided between those who consider the trial an exercise of defense of democracy and those who argue partisan motivations.
In a bar in Brasilia, where the trial was transmitted on a giant screen, customers broke into applause when the sentence was imposed, some with shouts of “Bolsonaro to prison!”.
“After so much wait, this despicable individual is being sent to jail,” 46 -year -old translator celebrated.
“This trial is unfair, (…) did not follow the normal rhythm. It is more political than legal,” he said in another neighborhood in Brasilia Germana Cavalcante, a 60 -year -old civil engineer.
Presidentials in 2026
Brazilians will vote in the presidential ones of 2026.
While Lula, 79, has to appear at re -election, the conviction to Bolsonaro must precipitate the race on the right to happen.
Until now, despite being politically disabled, the former president has affirmed his intention to present himself again in the elections.
