Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro has been found guilty of attempting to overturn the country’s 2022 election with a plot prosecutors say included plans to assassinate the president-elect in a bid to cling to power.
Four out of five justices on a Brazilian Supreme Court panel voted to convict Bolsonaro on all five counts in the landmark case, and to sentence him to 27 years and three months in prison.
Bolsonaro has been convicted of plotting a coup d’état, taking part in an armed criminal organization, attempting to abolish Brazil’s democratic order by force, committing violent acts against state institutions and damaging protected public property during the storming of government buildings by his supporters on January 8, 2023.
Part of the coup plot, prosecutors alleged, involved a plan to potentially use explosives, weapons of war or poison to assassinate leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who oversaw Bolsonaro’s trial.
The evidence against Bolsonaro largely centered on how he tried to stay in power after losing the presidential election in 2022 to Lula da Silva. Federal police said Bolsonaro had “full knowledge” of a plan to overturn the election results, pressure the military to intervene, and even create a parallel “crisis management office” to run the government.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at the Brazilian Supreme Court in Brasilia on June 9.
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Prosecutors had alleged that the coup plot began in 2021, with efforts to undermine public trust in the electoral system. After Bolsonaro’s defeat in the 2022 election, prosecutors said defendants attempted to overturn the results by encouraging Bolsonaro supporters to mobilize in Brasília, where they stormed and vandalized the three seats of government on January 8, 2023.
Moraes, who was the first justice to cast a guilty vote on Tuesday, said the defendants “committed all the criminal offenses imputed by the Attorney General’s Office.” Justices Flávio Dino, Cármen Lúcia, and Cristiano Zanin also voted to convict Bolsonaro.
