A populist president refused to accept his defeat at the ballot box, insisting that the election had been stolen. A far-right mob stormed the country’s institutions in his support. Yet democracy prevailed. And then, on Thursday, Brazil’s supreme court sentenced the former president Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison for leading a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2022 elections and “annihilate” democracy through a coup. The sprawling plot was both modern and crudely old school – extending from an online disinformation campaign to undermine faith in the voting system, to aborted plans to assassinate the newly elected president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, and the supreme court justice investigating Bolsonaro. It culminated in the riots in Brasília in January 2023.
Four of the five judges on the panel found Bolsonaro guilty. Seven close allies from the military and security establishment were convicted alongside him for the same crimes – including his former defence and justice ministers, former spy chief, generals and the former navy commander. According to the prosecution, the plans for a putsch failed because the army and air force chiefs refused to take part.
