Bolsonaro Begins 27-Year Sentence for Attempted Coup, Marking Historic Shift for Brazil
Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has begun serving a 27-year sentence for leading an attempt to overturn the 2022 election results, a landmark moment for the country’s democratic institutions.
The long-awaited moment many Brazilian democrats, left-wing activists, and families of coronavirus victims had hoped for has arrived. On Tuesday, the ultraright former president, 70, technically entered prison, beginning his sentence for orchestrating a coup attempt. However, Bolsonaro is currently confined to a room-cell in Brasília, having not moved a meter since his incarceration. The judge presiding over the case, presumably considering the former president’s age and fragile health, has ordered him to remain at the main police headquarters in Brasília, where he was transferred on Saturday after attempting to remove his electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.
This arrangement places the leading figure of the Brazilian right in conditions similar to those granted to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2018, avoiding imprisonment in a maximum-security prison or military facility. The judge of the Supreme Court, Alexandre de Moraes – the case’s prosecutor and a figure considered Bolsonaro’s greatest enemy by his supporters – rejected a defense request for Bolsonaro to serve his sentence under house arrest. The former Army captain suffers from recurrent gastrointestinal issues and hiccups, a consequence of a stabbing he endured in 2018.
The magistrate accuses Bolsonaro of attempting to flee over the weekend. Since Saturday, he has been held in a room approximately 12 square meters in size at the Federal Police Superintendency in the capital. The room is equipped with a bed, table, television, and air conditioning. Two of his sons visited him Tuesday morning, and his wife visited the previous day, bringing home-cooked meals, which the former president prefers over the Federal Police’s prison menu.
The Supreme Court, which has positioned itself as a staunch defender of democracy, has requested the Armed Forces strip the convicted individuals of their military ranks. President Lula has consistently maintained throughout the delicate judicial process that Bolsonaro’s presumption of innocence has been scrupulously respected. Bolsonaro, however, proclaims himself a victim of political persecution.
If Bolsonaro were to serve the full sentence, he would be released at nearly 100 years of age. Brazilian penal law, focused on social reintegration, stipulates that in a serious case like Bolsonaro’s, the prisoner serves 25% of the sentence in a closed regime – translating to six years for him – before transitioning to semi-liberty, allowing for work release. The former president was already ineligible to run for office since 2023 and, since August, has been under house arrest with a ban on using social media.
His disappearance from public life and the judge-imposed silence have politically weakened him. Efforts by his sons and party to push for an amnesty law or sentence reduction in Congress have, thus far, failed. Pressure from former U.S. President Donald Trump, in the form of threats, tariffs, and economic sanctions against the judges, did not succeed in saving his ally or holding him accountable for attempting to subvert the constitutional order and plotting the assassination of Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, and Judge Moraes. Brazilian institutions demonstrated remarkable firmness in the face of threats and aggression from the world’s most powerful politician. “That’s a shame,” the U.S. president reportedly responded on Saturday when informed by journalists that the “Trump of the tropics” had been taken into custody on suspicion of attempting to seek refuge in the U.S. Embassy.
The three generals (Walter Braga Netto, Augusto Heleno, and Pedro Paulo Nogueira) and Admiral Almir Garnier, convicted alongside Bolsonaro for conspiring to stage a coup against Lula, are also now imprisoned, in military facilities. Sentenced to between 19 and 24 years, they are the first high-ranking military officials to be convicted and imprisoned in Brazil’s history, which has seen both successful and failed uprisings. The generals previously served as ministers under Bolsonaro, while the admiral headed the Navy. A fifth convicted individual, former police minister Anderson Torres, has entered the wing designated for law enforcement officers in a civilian prison. Another convicted individual, a police commissioner who led espionage and is a member of Congress, fled to the United States, to Miami, weeks ago. The Supreme Court has requested Congress to remove him from his seat.
“Coup plotters have always gone unpunished, both in and out of power. Now, for the first time, the officers who betrayed the Constitution will begin to pay for their crimes,” wrote columnist Bernardo Mello Franco in O Globo.
The imprisonment of a president is not unprecedented in Brazil. Bolsonaro is the third president to be incarcerated during the democratic period, following Lula, whose convictions were later annulled, and Fernando Collor de Mello, who is currently serving his sentence under house arrest. Michel Temer was detained twice in 2019 but was never tried. The sentence against Bolsonaro, decided by a 4-1 vote, convicted him of five crimes: attempted coup d’état, attempted democratic abolition of the rule of law, leading a criminal organization, damage to public property, and damage to protected heritage.
Prosecutors argued that the scheme led by Bolsonaro to remain in power after losing the 2022 election to Lula failed due to the opposition of two of the three members of the Armed Forces high command.
