The former president of Brazil Jair Messias Bolsonaro, 70, began this Tuesday to serve his 27-year sentence for leading an attempted coup d’état, but without moving one meter from the room-cell where he is being held, in Brasilia. The judge in the case has decided, presumably in view of his age and fragile state of health, that he remain at the main police headquarters in Brasilia, where he was transferred on Saturday after trying to remove the electronic anklet that monitored his movements. The main leader of the Brazilian right is, therefore, detained in conditions similar to those granted in 2018 to the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and therefore avoids being interned in a maximum security prison or a military prison.
Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, instructor of the case and whom Bolsonarism considers its worst enemy, has not responded to the defense’s request to allow him to serve the punishment in house arrest. The Army captain in the reserve suffers from recurring gastrointestinal crises and hiccups, a consequence of a stab wound he suffered in 2018.
The magistrate accuses him of trying to escape last weekend. Since Saturday, Bolsonaro remains in a room of about 12 square meters in the Superintendency of the Federal Police in the capital. It has a bed, a table, television and air conditioning. This morning two of his children visited him and the day before his wife did, who cooks homemade dishes with which the former president feeds, who has preferred not to try the Federal Police menu for prisoners.
The highest court, established in recent times as the great defender of democracy, has asked the Armed Forces to remove the stripes from those convicted.
If former President Bolsonaro had to serve the entire sentence, he would get almost 100 years in prison. Brazilian criminal legislation, very focused on social reintegration, contemplates that in a serious case like that of Bolsonaro, the prisoner serves 25% in a closed regime (which translates to six years for him) before moving on to semi-freedom that allows him to go out to work. The ultra had been disqualified since 2023. And, since last August, under house arrest and with a veto from using social networks.
The disappearance from the public scene and the silence imposed by the judge has weakened him politically. The efforts of his children and his party to promote, in Congress, an amnesty law or a reduction of sentence that would free him from the burden of prison or soften it have been unsuccessful for the moment.
President Donald Trump’s formidable pressure, in the form of threats, tariffs and economic sanctions on judges, has failed to save his ally and prevent him from being held accountable for attempting to subvert the constitutional order. Brazilian institutions have shown enormous firmness in the face of threats and attacks from the most powerful politician in the world. “It’s a shame,” the American responded on Saturday when he learned, from journalists, that the Trump of the tropics He had been taken to a police station due to the judge’s suspicion that he wanted to take refuge in the US Embassy.
The generals convicted with Bolsonaro for plotting a coup plot against Lula are also already imprisoned, in their case in military facilities. They are the first high-ranking soldiers convicted and imprisoned in the history of Brazil, dotted with successful and unsuccessful riots. Another of the condemned, a police commissioner who directed espionage and is a congressman, fled weeks ago to the United States, to Miami.
On the other hand, a president being imprisoned is more common. Bolsonaro is the third in this democratic stage, after Lula, whose sentences were annulled, and Fernando Collor de Mello, who has been serving his sentence at home for a few months.
The ruling against Bolsonaro, adopted 4-1, 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 protected heritage.
The Prosecutor’s Office maintained that the plot led in 2022 by Bolsonaro to remain in power after losing the elections to Lula failed due to the opposition of two of the three members of the leadership of the Armed Forces.
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