Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro. Photo / Getty Images
Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro to begin serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a failed coup, after he exhausted all appeals.
The brash former army captain who fired up Brazil’s right and reshaped the country’s politics is ending a divisive career jailed in a small room at police headquarters equipped with a TV, mini-fridge, and air-conditioning.
Bolsonaro, 70, was convicted in September over a scheme to stop Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office as President after the 2022 elections that included a plot to kill the veteran leftist.
Prosecutors said the scheme failed only due to a lack of support from military top brass.
The Supreme Court rejected an appeal to his sentence earlier this month, and on Tuesday ruled the judgment was now final.
The court also ordered a military tribunal to decide whether Bolsonaro should be stripped of his captain’s rank.
Bolsonaro had been under house arrest until Saturday, when he was detained at police headquarters in the capital, Brasilia, for tampering with his ankle monitor using a soldering iron.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said there were signs Bolsonaro was planning to flee during a planned vigil organised by his son outside his home.
The justice pointed to the location of the nearby US embassy, and Bolsonaro’s close relationship with US President Donald Trump, suggesting he may have tried to escape to seek political asylum.
Bolsonaro said he had acted from “paranoia” induced by medications he was on and denied trying to escape.
The court ruled Bolsonaro will remain detained in the officers’ room – a secure space for protected prisoners – where he is currently held in Brasilia.
Five of Bolsonaro’s co-accused, including military generals and former ministers, also began serving sentences on Tuesday of between 19 and 26 years.
His former intelligence chief, Alexandre Ramagem, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison, was declared a fugitive after recently fleeing to the United States.
Bolsonaro’s defence lawyer, Paulo Cunha Bueno, said the closure of the case was “surprising” and that he would file an appeal anyway.
Bolsonaro is the fourth former President to be imprisoned since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985.
In May, Fernando Collor de Mello was allowed to serve his nearly nine-year sentence for corruption at home, on health grounds.
Bolsonaro’s defence team wants him to be afforded the same treatment, saying his detention is putting his life at risk.
Bolsonaro suffers the consequences of a stab wound to the abdomen during a 2018 campaign trail attack and has required several follow-up surgeries.
He also suffers from persistent “uncontrollable hiccups” linked to gastric issues that have left him out of breath and fainting, according to his doctors.
Bolsonaro’s family has sought to spotlight the poor mental and physical state of the far-right firebrand who drew criticism during his presidency for attacks on minorities and a lack of empathy for those dying from Covid.
After a visit to his father on Tuesday, Carlos Bolsonaro described him as “extremely fragile and psychologically devastated”.
“He’s eating very little – there’s no way for someone who knows he didn’t commit a crime to see this as normal.”
Bolsonaro, who was president from 2019 to 2022, maintains that he is innocent and a victim of political persecution.
With Bolsonaro out of the running, Brazil’s large conservative electorate is without a champion heading into the 2026 presidential elections, in which Lula, 80, has said he will seek a fourth term.
Lula himself spent time in jail in between presidential mandates for corruption. He was imprisoned for a year and a half before the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.
– Agence France-Presse