Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been ordered to serve a 27-year sentence in a 12-square-metre bedroom in a police base in the capital Brasília after being convicted of plotting a coup.
The far-right populist, who ruled Latin America’s largest democracy from 2019 to 2022, was sentenced in September after the Supreme Court found him guilty of criminal conspiracy to prevent his leftist rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking power.
The plot – which included planning to assassinate Lula and his partner Geraldo Alcmin – foundered after military chiefs refused to take part and a court later convicted Bolsonaro and six accomplices of trying to “destroy” Brazil’s democracy and plunge the country back into dictatorship.
On Tuesday, Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes ruled that Bolsonaro should begin serving his sentence after the case formally ends following an appeals period. Bolsonaro has been under house arrest since August and was taken into preventive custody on Saturday after a failed attempt to cut off his electronic ankle tag with a soldering iron.
Bolsonaro’s six co-conspirators were also ordered to begin serving their sentences.
Former Defense Minister General Paulo Sergio Nogueira de Oliveira and former Minister of Institutional Security General Augusto Heleno were arrested and imprisoned in the Planalto Military Command in Brasília. They received sentences of 19 and 21 years respectively.
Former naval commander Admiral Almir Garnier Santos, who received a 24-year sentence, was reportedly arrested by naval authorities and held at a naval base.
Bolsonaro’s former defense minister, General Walter Braga Netto, who received a 26-year sentence, was already in custody after being arrested last December.
former justice minister, Anderson Torres, who received a 24-year sentence, was expected to be sent to a prison called Papudinha for police officers and other “special” prisoners in Brasília.
Former spy chief Alexandre Ramagem received a 16-year sentence, but recently fled to the United States to avoid prison.
Bolsonaro’s imprisonment has sparked jubilation among progressive Brazilians, who remember his four-year government as a disastrous period of environmental destruction, international isolation and hostility towards minorities. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians have died during the Covid outbreak, with Bolsonaro accused of catastrophic mishandling with his anti-scientific stance.
Rio de Janeiro record store owner Mustafa Baba-Aissa marked the historic occasion by decorating it with a white banner reading: “Bolsonaro is in jail!”
“He is a despicable person who has done nothing in his life except live on public money… I don’t know how he got elected,” said the business owner, who had plastered his shop windows with homemade posters celebrating Bolsonaro’s fall.
Bolsonaro supporters condemned the jailing of their leader, the paratrooper-turned-politician, who was elected in 2018, and cast it as South America’s answer to Donald Trump.
“They have been kidnapped,” complained Bolsonaro activist Ronnie de Souza, 43, standing outside a federal police base.
Lenildo Mendes dos Santos Sertão, an Amazonian politician who uses the alias Delegado Cavera (“police chief Skull”), claimed that his colleague was the victim of a witch-hunt. “He fought the system and now the system has imprisoned him unfairly and illegally,” Sertão said.
Bolsonarista vowed to keep fighting even with the head of his movement in jail and out of the political game. “He represents millions of people in our country,” Souza said, predicting that large numbers of followers would come to Brasília to protest Bolsonaro’s plight.
But so far there have been no signs of mass protests or unrest, with only small groups of Bolsonaristas demonstrating and praying outside the federal police compound where they have spent the last three nights.
Experts say the former president’s influence has waned dramatically in recent months, especially after Bolsonaro was arrested on charges of tampering with his ankle tag.
Camila Rocha, a political scientist who studies Brazil’s new right, said recent polls have shown a clear decline in support for Bolsonaro both in the streets and on social media. One study found that only 13% of voters now supported Bolsonaro “no matter what”. Last month, a rally organized by Bolsonaro’s family in Brasília drew about 2,000 people — a far cry from the massive crowds the former president drew at the height of his powers.
“Could there be more protests? Sure. But I think this downward trend has been established,” said Rocha, who saw Bolsonaro in “a dead-end situation.”
Rocha believed that Bolsonaro’s arrest was good news for right-wing politicians hoping to get their votes, as well as voters hoping to see “a reduction in anti-democracy extremism” in Brazil.
Not all Bolsonaro supporters convicted of the coup were imprisoned on Tuesday. Ramagem Abin, the former head of Brazil’s intelligence agency, recently left the country despite having his passport revoked.
“I am safe in America,” Ramagame declared in a social media video on Monday, urging Bolsonistas to take to the streets to defend “our greatest leader.”
On Tuesday afternoon, as the conspirators began serving their sentences, there was no immediate sign that citizens would heed their calls.
After meeting his father earlier in the day, Carlos Bolsonaro told reporters: “He is psychologically devastated.”
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