Brazil’s Bolsonaro behind bars after appeals run out
He will serve 27 years in prison
What happened
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday began his 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup to stay in power after his 2022 election loss to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro had been in police custody since Saturday, when he was detained for tampering with his ankle monitor while under house arrest. Brazil’s Supreme Court upheld his conviction and determined that he had exhausted all his appeals.
Who said what
Bolsonaro is the “first former president to be found guilty of attempting to subvert Latin America’s largest democracy,” The Washington Post said. His imprisonment was still a “surprise” to “many in the South American nation who doubted he would ever end up behind bars,” The Associated Press said. Bolsonaro will serve his sentence at the federal police headquarters in Brasília, in a special “12-square-meter room” with “a bed, a private bathroom, air conditioning, a TV set and a desk.”
President Donald Trump had deployed “some of the strongest tools at his disposal” — including tariffs on coffee and beef and sanctions on judges — to force Brazil to drop the charges against Bolsonaro, said The New York Times. “But Brazil’s institutions essentially ignored him,” and “Trump’s seeming capitulation shows that his efforts were basically for naught,” and may have even “backfired” on both him and Bolsonaro.
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What next?
Bolsonaro’s lawyers pledged to “pursue an appeal to fight the conviction,” even though his conviction was just “deemed final, quashing any chance of further appeals,” CNN said. Analysts “widely expect” Bolsonaro to “remain in prison for a short time before the Supreme Court ultimately allows him to serve out the rest of his sentence at home,” the Times said.
