From the BBC:
“Brazil's former President
Bolsonaro found guilty of plotting coup”
The former president of Brazil,
Jair Bolsonaro, has been found guilty of plotting a military coup. Four out of
the five Supreme Court justices tasked with judging the former leader found him
guilty. One judge voted to acquit him. The 70-year-old has been convicted 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. While the plot
failed to enlist enough support from the military to go ahead, it did culminate
in the storming of government buildings by Bolsonaro's supporters on 8 January
2023, the justices found. The charges carry heavy sentences and could add up to
a prison term of more than 40 years. The justices have begun with the
sentencing.
Casting the decisive vote,
Justice Cármen Lúcia said on Thursday that Bolsonaro had triggered the
"insurgency" of 8 January 2023, when thousands of his supporters
vandalised the Supreme Court, the presidential palace, and Congress. She found
him guilty on all the five charges: attempting to stage a coup, leading an
armed criminal organisation, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule
of law, and two more charges related to the damage of property during the
storming of buildings in Brasília on 8 January 2023. Bolsonaro has always
maintained his innocence and has called the trial a "witch hunt",
arguing it was politically motivated. His lawyers are expected to lodge
appeals. Bolsonaro has not been in court for any of the sessions of the final
phase of the trial. His lawyers cited health reasons for his decision to follow
proceedings from his home in Brasília. He was stabbed in the stomach on the
campaign trail in 2018 and has been having recurrent health problems since. He
has been under house arrest since the beginning of August after a police report
alleged that he and his son, Eduardo, had tried to interfere in the trial. His
lawyer was present in court but left after Justice Lúcia had declared his
client guilty of the attempted coup and armed criminal conspiracy, even before
she had finished speaking.
The charges against Bolsonaro did
not just relate to events of 8 January 2023. Prosecutors said he had started to
plot to stay in power long before, proposing launching a coup to military
commanders and sowing unfounded doubts about the electoral system. They also
said that he knew of a plan to assassinate Lula, his vice-presidential running
mate, and a Supreme Court Justice. Justice Lúcia compared the attempted coup to
a "virus", which, if left to fester, can kill the society in which it
has taken hold in. She added: "I hope that this trial will prove a cure so
that it doesn't come back. Relapses aren't good." Supporters of Bolsonaro
have been scathing in their criticism of the proceedings, arguing that they are
designed to prevent him from running for the presidency in the 2026 election. While
Bolsonaro is already barred from running for public office until 2030 for
falsely claiming that Brazil's voting system was vulnerable to fraud, he had
declared his intention to fight that ban so he could stand for a second term in
2026. One of his vocal supporters has been US President Donald Trump, who
imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports citing the court's treatment of
Bolsonaro as a trigger for the hike. He also sanctioned Alexandre de Moraes,
the Supreme Court justice overseeing the Bolsonaro trial. Reacting to
Bolsonaro's conviction, Trump said he found it "very surprising". "It's
very much what they tried to do with me, but they didn't get away with it at
all. He was a good man, I don't see that happening," Trump told reporters,
drawing parallels between Bolsonaro and himself. Jair Bolsonaro's son Eduardo,
who lobbied for the imposition of sanctions on Brazilian imports, told Reuters
news agency that he expected the US would take further measures in the wake of
the verdict. "We are going to have a firm response with actions from the
US government against this dictatorship that is being installed in
Brazil," he said.
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