Former president sought to ‘annihilate’ country’s democracy after losing 2022 election
Explainer: what did Bolsonaro’s trial reveal?
Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to more than 27 years in prison for plotting a military coup and seeking to “annihilate” the South American country’s democracy.
Justices Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha and Cristiano Zanin ruled on Thursday that Bolsonaro – a former paratrooper who was elected president in 2018 – was guilty of seeking to forcibly cling to power after losing the 2022 election, meaning four of the five judges involved in the trial had found Brazil’s former leader guilty.
Announcing Bolsonaro’s sentence for crimes including coup d’etat and violently attempting to abolish Brazil’s democracy on Thursday night, the supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes said: “[He tried to] annihilate the essential pillars of the democratic rule-of-law state … the greatest consequence [of which] … would have been the return of dictatorship to Brazil.”
Delivering her decisive vote, Rocha denounced what she called an attempt to “sow the malignant seed of anti-democracy” in Brazil – but celebrated how the country’s institutions had survived and were fighting back.
“Brazilian democracy was not shaken,” Rocha told a court in the capital, Brasília, warning of the spread of “the virus of authoritarianism”.
On Tuesday two other judges, Moraes and Flávio Dino, also declared the 70-year-old politician guilty of leading what the former called “a criminal organisation” that had sought to plunge the South American country back into dictatorship.
“Jair Bolsonaro was leader of this criminal structure,” Moraes said during a five-hour address in which he offered a comprehensive account of the slow-burn conspiracy against Brazilian democracy.
“The victim is the Brazilian state,” said Moraes, claiming the plot had unfolded between July 2021 and January 2023, when Bolsonaro supporters rampaged through Brasília after the election’s leftwing winner, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, took power.
A fourth judge, Luiz Fux, voted to absolve Bolsonaro on Wednesday, claiming there was “absolutely no proof” the former president had been aware or part of an alleged plot to assassinate Lula and Moraes in late 2022, or had tried to stage a coup.
Fux called the 8 January 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.
Fux did, however, vote to convict two of Bolsonaro’s closest allies – his former defence minister, Gen Walter Braga Netto, and his former aide-de-camp, Lt Col Mauro Cid – for the crime of violently attempting to abolish Brazilian democracy. The judge concluded that the pair had helped plan and bankroll a plot to murder Moraes in order to generate social mayhem they hoped would trigger a military intervention.
There were leftwing celebrations outside the supreme court as Rocha sealed the fate of Bolsonaro and seven other close allies who were also convicted. They include the former defence ministers, Netto and Gen Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, the former minister for institutional security, Gen Augusto Heleno, and the former navy commander, Adm Almir Garnier Santos.
Bolsonaro’s former spy chief, Alexandre Ramagem, and justice minister, Anderson Torres, were also found guilty, as was Cid.
“Today, Brazil is making history,” Lindbergh Farias, the leader of Lula’s Workers’ party in the lower house of congress, said as he emerged from the building. “Brazil is saying: ‘Coups are a crime!’”
Fabiano Leitão, a trumpeter who has spent years using his instrument to criticise Bolsonaro, turned up to mark the day of history with a rendition of Chopin’s Funeral March that symbolised the former president’s downfall. “It’s the end! It’s the end of this guy!” Leitão said as he pulled out his trumpet.
Bolsonaro’s senator son, Flávio Bolsonaro, called the verdict political persecution and Donald Trump said the conviction was “very surprising”.
“That’s very much like they tried to do with me. But they didn’t get away with it at all,” said the US president who has spent recent months trying to pressure Brazil’s supreme court and government into halting Bolsonaro’s trial with a campaign of tariffs and sanctions.
“The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt,” tweeted the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, calling the conviction “unjust”.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, another son of the former president, told Reuters he expected the US to apply further sanctions against officials following his father’s conviction.
In a post on social media, Brazil’s foreign ministry rejected the statement from US officials, saying “threats like those made today by the US secretary of state Marco Rubio … will not intimidate our democracy”.
The former president did not attend court this week, remaining in his nearby mansion, where he is under house arrest and police officers have been stationed to ensure he does not flee to one of Brasília’s foreign embassies.
Progressive elation at the downfall of a president blamed for rampant environmental destruction, hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths and attacks on minorities, has been tempered by the realisation that his political movement remains very much alive. Some fear Fux’s questioning of the judges’ authority over the case could open the door to legal challenges and even the trial’s annulment in the future.
“I wouldn’t declare Jair Bolsonaro’s political death,” said Dr Camila Rocha, a political scientist from the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning, who studies the Brazilian right.
Rocha expected supporters of the former president to keep fighting to rescue their leader from jail. Likely strategies include trying to elect a large number of rightwing senators in next year’s elections who could impeach members of the supreme court considered Bolsonaro’s foes; petitioning Donald Trump to heap more pressure on Brazil over Bolsonaro’s plight; and trying to ensure that a pro-Bolsonaro candidate beats Lula in the 2026 presidential election. Their hope was that a rightwing president might grant Bolsonaro a pardon, although the supreme court could torpedo those plans, she said.
“I think they’ll continue trying various ways of getting Bolsonaro out of jail and to uphold his leadership and keep him visible,” she predicted.
In recent weeks, pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers have been pushing the idea of an amnesty for their leader and others who were involved in the coup attempt and the 8 January 2023 riots in Brasília. They claim such forgiveness would help pacify a politically divided country.
But Fabio Victor, the author of a book about military involvement in Brazilian politics called Camouflaged Power, said he believed an amnesty would serve as an “incentive to illegality”. “It would send an awful signal – it would undoubtedly represent a setback to democracy,” he warned.
Source: www.theguardian.com