Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, will finally find himself in the dock this week, accused of masterminding an armed far-right conspiracy to seize power after losing the 2022 presidential election. The 70-year-old paratrooper turned populist, who governed from 2019 until 2023, is scheduled to be interrogated by the supreme court as it seeks to untangle what federal police claim was a sprawling three-year plot to vandalize one of the world’s largest democracies. Seven other alleged co-conspirators will also be questioned, including four former Bolsonaro ministers.
Bolsonaro’s day in court is a milestone moment for a country that escaped from two decades of military dictatorship in 1985 but appears to have come perilously close to a return to authoritarian rule after the veteran leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beat Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election. “This is the first time in Brazilian history that there is the prospect of the perpetrators of a coup being brought to justice,” said Bernardo Mello Franco, a political writer for the newspaper O Globo.
Bolsonaro is accused of trying – but ultimately failing – to overturn Lula’s victory through a murderous plot, which allegedly involved assassinating or arresting key political rivals including the president-elect, his vice-president-elect, Geraldo Alckmin, and the supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes. He has repeatedly denied the charges. There is broad consensus among experts that Bolsonaro will be found guilty and convicted later this year, meaning the former congressman could face political oblivion and a decades-long prison sentence.
Read more here.
