Online Reporter
The former President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has been sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison after being found guilty of plotting a military coup.
A panel of five Supreme Court justices handed down the sentence just hours after they had convicted the former leader.
They ruled he was guilty of leading a conspiracy aimed at keeping him in power after he lost the 2022 election to his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Four of the justices found him guilty while one voted to acquit him.
Bolsonaro’s lawyers have called the sentence “absurdly excessive”, saying they would file “the appropriate appeals”.
The Supreme Court panel also barred him from running for public office until 2060 — eight years after the end of his sentence.
Bolsonaro, who was put under house arrest after being deemed a flight risk, did not attend this final phase of the trial in person.
But he has in the past said it was designed to prevent him from running in the 2026 presidential election — even though he had already been barred from public office on separate charges.
He has also called it a “witch-hunt”.
His words have previously been echoed by United States President Donald Trump, who imposed 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian goods, framing them as retaliation for Bolsonaro’s prosecution.
Reacting to the guilty verdict, Trump said he found it “very surprising” and compared it to his own experience: “That’s very much like they tried to do with me. But they didn’t get away with it at all.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Brazil’s Supreme Court had “unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro” and threatened to “respond accordingly to this witch- hunt”.
Brazil’s foreign ministry reacted swiftly, posting on X that “threats like the one made today by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a statement that attacks a Brazilian authority and ignores the facts and the compelling evidence on record, will not intimidate our democracy”.
