{"id":416657,"date":"2025-09-11T20:23:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T20:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/416657\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T20:23:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T20:23:11","slug":"brazils-supreme-court-finds-bolsonaro-guilty-of-plotting-military-coup-jair-bolsonaro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/416657\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil\u2019s supreme court finds Bolsonaro guilty of plotting military coup | Jair Bolsonaro"},"content":{"rendered":"

A majority of Brazil\u2019s supreme court judges have voted to convict the country\u2019s former president Jair Bolsonaro<\/a> of plotting a military coup, leaving the far-right populist facing a decades-long sentence for leading the criminal conspiracy.<\/p>\n

Justice C\u00e1rmen L\u00facia Antunes Rocha ruled on \u200bThursday that Bolsonaro \u2013 a former paratrooper who was elected president in 2018 \u2013 was guilty of seeking to forcibly cling to power after losing the 2022 election, meaning three of the five judges involved in the trial had found Brazil\u2019s former leader guilty.<\/p>\n

Delivering her decisive vote, Rocha denounced what she called an attempt to \u201csow the malignant seed of anti-democracy\u201d in Brazil \u2013 but celebrated how the country\u2019s institutions had survived and were fighting back.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrazilian democracy was not shaken,\u201d Rocha told a court in the capital, Bras\u00edlia, warning of the spread of \u201cthe virus of authoritarianism\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, two other judges, Alexandre de Moraes<\/a> and Fl\u00e1vio Dino, also declared the 70-year-old politician guilty<\/a> of leading what the former called \u201ca criminal organisation\u201d that had sought to plunge the South American country back into dictatorship.<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s Federal Supreme Court (STF) minister Carmen Lucia. Photograph: Eraldo Peres\/AP<\/p>\n

\u201cJair Bolsonaro was leader of this criminal structure,\u201d Moraes said during a five-hour address in which he offered a comprehensive account of the slow-burn conspiracy against Brazilian democracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe victim is the Brazilian state,\u201d said Moraes, claiming the plot had unfolded between July 2021 and January 2023, when Bolsonaro supporters rampaged through Bras\u00edlia after the election\u2019s leftwing winner, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, took power.<\/p>\n

A fourth judge, Luiz Fux, voted to absolve Bolsonaro on Wednesday, claiming there was \u201cabsolutely no proof\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Fux called the 8 January 2023 uprising \u2013 when hardcore Bolsonaristas ransacked the supreme court, presidential palace and congress \u2013 a \u201cbarbaric act\u201d that had caused \u201cdamage of an Amazonian-scale\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

Fux did, however, vote to convict two of Bolsonaro\u2019s closest allies \u2013 his former defence minister Gen Walter Braga Netto and his former aide-de-camp Lt Col Mauro Cid \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro\u2019s sentence is expected to be set on Friday after the remaining judge, Cristiano Zanin, has cast his vote. Experts say the sentence for crimes including engineering a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat and violently attempting to abolish Brazil\u2019s democracy could be as high as 43 years. The former president did not attend court this week, remaining in his nearby mansion, where he is under house arrest and where police officers have been stationed to ensure he does not flee to one of Bras\u00edlia\u2019s foreign embassies.<\/p>\n

Progressive elation at the downfall of a president blamed for rampant environment 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\u2019s questioning of the judges\u2019 authority over the case could open the door to legal challenges and even the trial\u2019s annulment in the future.<\/p>\n

Supporters of Bolsonaro demonstrated in S\u00e3o Paulo on Brazilian Independence Day (7 September). Photograph: Amanda Perobelli\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t declare Jair Bolsonaro\u2019s political death,\u201d said Dr Camila Rocha, a political scientist from the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning who studies the Brazilian right.<\/p>\n

Rocha expected supporters of the former president to keep fighting to rescue their leader from jail. Likely strategies included trying to elect a large number of rightwing senators in next year\u2019s elections who could impeach members of the supreme court considered Bolsonaro\u2019s foes; petitioning Donald Trump<\/a> to heap more pressure on Brazil over Bolsonaro\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019ll continue trying various ways of getting Bolsonaro out of jail and to uphold his leadership and keep him visible,\u201d she predicted.<\/p>\n

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 Bras\u00edlia. They claim such forgiveness would help \u201cpacify\u201d a politically divided country.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cincentive to illegality\u201d. \u201cIt would send an awful signal \u2013 it would undoubtedly represent a setback to democracy,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n

More details soon\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A majority of Brazil\u2019s supreme court judges have voted to convict the country\u2019s former president Jair Bolsonaro of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-416657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115187535303957347","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}