Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced by the Supreme Court on Thursday, September 11, 2025, to 27 years and three months in prison for conspiring against the democratic order after losing the 2022 election to current president Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva.<\/p>\n\n
The court had planned to hand down the sentences in a closed session scheduled for Friday, September 12th. However, they immediately moved to the sentencing phase once the hearing concluded Thursday, in which, by four votes to one, it declared Bolsonaro and seven other defendants guilty, including former ministers and former military chiefs.<\/p>\n\n
In Bolsonaro\u2019s case, the presiding judge considered the aggravating factor that the prosecution had identified him as the \u201cleader\u201d of a \u201ccriminal organization\u201d that conspired to prevent the current president from taking office after winning the October 2022 elections.<\/p>\n\n
Bolsonaro and the other seven defendants were found guilty of crimes against democracy, such as attempting to abolish the democratic rule of law, coup d\u2019\u00e9tat, criminal organization, damage to protected property, and aggravated damage.<\/p>\n\n
According to the charges brought by the Attorney General\u2019s Office and accepted by four of the five judges, the conspiracy began in June 2021, just over a year before the elections, when Lula was starting to rise in the polls.<\/p>\n\n
The plot unfolded in several stages, beginning with an aggressive campaign of discredit against the country\u2019s institutions and electoral system, directed by Bolsonaro himself, according to the prosecution.<\/p>\n\n
The conspiracy escalated from words to actions after Lula won the October 2022 elections, with intense protests, attacks thwarted by the police, and encampments outside military barracks where thousands of Bolsonaro supporters demanded that the Army block Lula\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n\n
The progressive leader ultimately took office on January 1, 2023, and a week later, thousands of far-right activists left one of those camps in Bras\u00edlia to violently storm the offices of the Presidency, Parliament, and the Supreme Court itself.<\/p>\n\n
According to the prosecution, that action was the culmination of a coup plot that led to the convictions and that, according to the charges, was \u201cled\u201d and personally directed by Bolsonaro, with the goal of \u201cclinging to power\u201d and installing \u201ca dictatorship\u201d in Brazil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced by the Supreme Court on Thursday, September 11, 2025, to 27 years and three months in prison for conspiring against the democratic order after losing the 2022 election to current president Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva. The court had planned to hand down the sentences in a closed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":174262,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_eb_data_table":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15445],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n