Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro must serve 27 years in prison for plotting a coup attempt, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled on Tuesday.
The former president’s legal team had chosen not to appeal his conviction after he was found guilty of plotting a coup in 2022 to overthrow his successor, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. As a result, Moraes called for the conviction to be considered final, eliminating the possibility of further appeals, and for Bolsonaro to be sentenced to 27 years in prison.
Bolsonaro has been in police custody for tampering with a court-ordered ankle monitor and has been jailed at Brazil’s Federal Police headquarters since Saturday. Mr. Moraes said on Tuesday that President Bolsonaro would serve his sentence at headquarters.
Bolsonaro’s lawyer Paulo Cunha Bueno said in a post on X that despite the court’s decision being final, the former president would proceed with an appeal to challenge the conviction.
On Saturday, Bolsonaro’s lawyers called the former president’s arrest “unjustified” and argued that his health was at risk while incarcerated. The Supreme Court later released a video in which Bolsonaro admitted to tampering with his ankle monitor with a soldering iron. The suspect reportedly said he did it not to escape house arrest, but because the new drug caused him to hallucinate.
The case that landed Bolsonaro in prison began shortly after he lost his 2022 re-election bid to Lula da Silva. Federal authorities say the former president and his co-conspirators almost immediately began plotting illegal routes to retain office, one of the results of which was the dramatic attack on a government building in Brasilia by Bolsonaro supporters on January 8, 2023.
After Bolsonaro’s ally, US President Donald Trump, was re-elected in 2024, the US quickly began commenting on the incident as a foreign policy issue. In July, Trump also imposed hefty tariffs on some Brazilian exports and urged Brazil to end what he called a “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro.
But by the time Bolsonaro was detained over the weekend, the White House had made a tariff exemption for Brazil’s biggest export. Asked about Bolsonaro’s arrest on Saturday, Trump told reporters he had not heard about it but said it was “unfortunate.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
