Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered that right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro be sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison for plotting a coup after losing the last election.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled on Tuesday that the case had reached its final verdict and no further appeals were possible.
Bolsonaro, 70, was found guilty of leading a conspiracy aimed at maintaining power after losing the 2022 elections to his leftist rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
He will begin serving his sentence in a federal police prison cell in the capital, Brasilia, where he has been detained since Saturday after being deemed a flight risk and removed from house arrest.
At a hearing on Sunday, Bolsonaro admitted that he tried to pry open his ankle monitor with a soldering iron until he “lost consciousness,” court documents show.
He said he had no intention of escaping and attributed the damage to the monitor to drug-induced “paranoia”.
Justice Moraes ordered on Tuesday that Bolsonaro be given full-time medical care, whose medical team had previously said he was suffering from deteriorating health.
Supreme Court judges said in September, when Bolsonaro was found guilty of plotting a coup, that he knew of a plan to assassinate Lula and his vice-presidential candidate, Geraldo Alcmin, and to arrest and execute Moraes, who oversaw Bolsonaro’s trial.
The plot failed to gain the support of the army and air force commanders. Lula was sworn in without incident on 1 January 2023.
But a week later, on January 8, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings in Brasília. Security forces intervened and about 1,500 people were arrested.
The judges found that the rioters were incited by Bolsonaro, whose plan, they said, was for the military to intervene and return him to power.
Bolsonaro was also barred from running for public office until 2060, eight years after his sentence ends.
The former president called the lawsuit a “witch hunt” designed to prevent him from running in the 2026 presidential election.
Justice Moraes also ordered on Tuesday that others found guilty of being Bolsonaro’s co-conspirators must begin their sentences.
They include former Institutional Security Minister General Augusto Heleno and former Defense Minister General Paulo Sergio Nogueira de Oliveira.
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