Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, will stand trial for an alleged coup attempt after a unanimous decision by the country’s highest court, reports the Guardian.
The Brazilian Supreme Court’s five-member panel voted together to advance the trial, which could begin as early as this year with the far-right politician facing a possible prison sentence of more than 40 years. The panel ruled that seven other close allies of the ex-president will also stand trial for crimes including involvement in an armed criminal organisation, coup d’état and violently attempting to abolish Brazilian democracy.
The accused include some of Bolsonaro’s highest-ranking officials, namely former defence ministers, General Walter Braga Netto and General Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira; his former navy commander, Admiral Almir Garnier Santos; his former security minister, Anderson Torres; his former spy chief Alexandre Ramagem; and his former minister for institutional security, General Augusto Heleno. Bolsonaro’s former assistant, Lt Col Mauro Cid will receive a lighter sentence if convicted, having struck a deal with prosecutors.
The men are accused of playing a central role in a conspiracy to keep the far-right president in power after he narrowly lost the 2022 presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Allegations centre on a supposed plan to stage a coup in the months between the October election and the riots that broke out in the capital city of Brasília on 8 January 2023, a week after Lula’s inauguration. Prosecutors allege that the far-right riots were a last-ditch attempt to return Bolsonaro to power by creating a situation that would justify military intervention.
“It was a veritable pitched battle … It was an extraordinarily violent attempted coup d’état,” supreme court judge Alexandre de Moraes told the court as he showed video footage of Bolsonaro supporters vandalising the court building and attacking police in the capital.
[See more: Brazil narrowly avoided a military coup in 2022, a federal report concludes]
Moraes was among the figures targeted for assassination under the alleged Green and Yellow Dagger plot, which also aimed to fatally poison Lula and use the high-profile killings to cause social and political chaos.
Attorney General Paulo Gonet told the court police investigators had “uncovered a terrifying operation to carry out the coup, which even included killing the president and vice-president elect, as well as that of a supreme court minister.” He noted that only their failure to co-opt the commander of the army prevented the string of brutal killings from happening.
Bolsonaro rejected the charge in a WhatsApp statement sent to allies at the beginning of hearings on Tuesday, echoed in a Wednesday statement in which he claimed he was the victim of judicial persecution meant to end his decades-long political career and silence right-wing opposition. His lawyer, as well as lawyers for five of his alleged co-conspirators issued statements asserting their innocence or calling for the charges to be thrown out. Missing were any responses from Lt Col Cid, and General Heleno.
With little hope of winning at trial, experts believe Bolsonaro’s best chances of escaping prison lie in helping elect a right-wing ally in next year’s presidential election who can pardon him (both his wife and son are possible candidates) or simply fleeing the country.
There is also his old foreign ally, Donald Trump. However, while Bolsonaro may be pinning his hopes on getting bailed out by the US president, Bernardo Mello Franco, a political commentator for O Globo, said he suspected that Trump has “greater priorities than Brazil … [and that] the Bolsonaros are paying more attention to Trump than Trump is paying to Bolsonaro.”
