The Supreme Federal Court of Brazil sentenced former President Jair Bolsonaro for a majority for participating in a coup attempt.
The ruling approved with the vote of 3 of the 5 judges means that the ex -president, 70, could receive a penalty exceeding 40 years in prison.
The conviction was possible thanks to magistrate Cármen Lúcia, whose favorable vote joined that of Judges Alexandre de Moraes and Flávio Dino. A fourth judge, Luiz Fux, acquitted Bolsonaro and proposed to cancel the case claiming the alleged incompetence of the supreme to judge it.
The decision against Bolsonaro will not be complete until the fifth magistrate, Cristiano Zanin, vote, whose vote could no longer change the decision.
However, in the event that your vote is absolute, it could open a path for the process to be reevaluated by the Plenary of 11 Supreme Judges, because for that it happens that two of the five magistrates have voted for the acquittal.
In any case, it is a historical failure, because never before a Brazilian ex -president had been condemned by coup.
The process against Bolsonaro is linked to the assault against the Brazilian institutions held on January 8, 2023, when thousands of followers of Bolsonaro took by force the National Congress, the Supreme Court and the Palacio del Planalto, in a desperate attempt to make the newly opened government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva unfeasible.
That day, Bolsonaro was not in Brazil, as he had marched on December 30 to the United States so as not to be present during the inauguration of Lula, held on January 1.
Bolsonaro has denied having had some relationship with that kind of civil uprising. However, the magistrates of the Federal Supreme Court saw that event as part of a broader plan to overthrow Lula.
In fact, during the process the right -wing ex -president was accused of leading a conspiracy to discredit the electoral system, attack the institutions and ignore the results of the voting.
The ultimate goal of these actions may be summarized in some of the crimes for which Bolsonaro was judged: attempt with a coup d’etat and violent abolition of the democratic state of law.
From Lula’s freedom to criticism of elections
According to the Attorney General of Brazil, the coup plot began to take shape in 2021, after Lula regained his freedom and, with her, his ability to run for elections thanks to the fact that the Supreme Court left without effect a condemnation for corruption against him due to procedural failures.
From that moment on, Bolsonaro began to systematically criticize the Brazilian electoral system and in doubt, without offering evidence, the reliability of the voting machines.
Subsequently, during their investigations, the police authorities found evidence that some Bolsonaro collaborators evaluated ways to generate doubts about the voting system.
Despite the efforts to discredit the elections, the votes were carried out normally in October 2022 and Lula managed to impose itself by obtaining 51% of the votes against 49% achieved by Bolsonaro.
Then, the still president in the year was locked in the presidential residence, where he remained for 40 days without speaking in public.
When he finally spoke, he did it through a brief statement in which he authorized the beginning of the transition, but without making any recognition of his electoral defeat.
Between the plot and Trump’s sanctions
During the weeks in which Bolsonaro was held, his followers began to build camping in front of the barracks asking for a “military intervention.”
Judicial investigations link several of the ex -president’s collaborators with these protests. One of them, Mario Fernandes, admitted to the Supreme Court that wrote a plan to kill Lula and his elected vice president Geraldo Alckmin, as well as Alexandre de Moraes, one of the magistrates of that court.
Although Fernandes denied that he was going to present that document before someone, the Prosecutor’s Office determined that he printed it in November 2022 before meeting with Bolsonaro in the presidential palace.
According to the investigations, Bolsonaro also studied the draft of a decree that ordered the arrest of the Supreme Judges and allowed to convene new elections.
At the beginning of December 2022, Bolsonaro met with the country’s military commanders to present a decree project to declare a state of siege, but, as the Federal Police concluded, the lack of support of the military heads of land and air made the alleged coup conspiracy shipping.
During the investigations, Bolsonaro admitted to having analyzed with the armed forces officers the “possibilities” behind the elections, but said that they were all within the Constitution.
After his eventual return to Brazil, Bolsonaro began denouncing investigations against him as a political persecution, while his son, congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, moved to the US to make lobby Before the government of Donald Trump, who has been a strong ally of the former Brazilian president.
The effect of these efforts became visible last July, when Trump announced that it would impose 50% tariffs on Brazil’s products due to what he described as a “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro.
The US government also sanctioned Alexandre de Moraes, the magistrate of the Supreme Court who leads the cause against Bolsonaro, through the Magnitsky Global Law, created to punish foreigners accused of serious human rights violations or corruption.
This week, when asked about a possible condemnation of Bolsonaro, a White House spokeswoman said Trump “is not afraid to use the economic power and military power of the United States to protect freedom of expression around the world.”
*With information from Gerardo Lissardy and Caio Quero.
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