Brazil’s Supreme Court started weighing Tuesday whether to put far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro on trial for allegedly masterminding an attempted coup after losing elections in 2022.
The case arises from alleged efforts to unseat leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to whom Bolsonaro lost a vote in October that year by a razor-thin margin.
The 70-year-old was charged in February with crimes including overseeing a “coup d’etat,” the “attempted violent abolition of the democratic state of law” and “armed criminal organization.”
He risks a sentence of about 40 years if convicted, but has insisted he is the victim of a political plot to exclude him from running in presidential elections in 2026.
“This is the largest political-judicial persecution in the history of Brazil,” Bolsonaro said in a statement Tuesday, shortly before taking a seat in the front row of the courtroom, flanked by his lawyers and facing the judges who will decide his fate.
The investigation that led to Bolsonaro being charged with leading a “criminal organization” yielded a dossier of nearly 900 pages.
Dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics” after his political idol Donald Trump, Bolsonaro has been the target of multiple investigations since his turbulent years as president of Latin America’s biggest democracy from 2019 to 2022.
Prosecutors say the former army captain was aware of a plot to invoke a state of emergency to bring about a “correction” of the 2022 election outcome, and even plans to assassinate Lula, his deputy Geraldo Alckmin, and Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes — an arch rival and one of the judges in this case.
The alleged plot did not come to fruition due to a lack of support from the army high command, according to prosecutors.
‘They will kill me’
Investigations have also linked Bolsonaro to the disturbances of January 8, 2023, when thousands of his backers stormed the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court demanding the military oust Lula a week after his inauguration.
Bolsonaro was in the United States at the time, and denies any involvement.
“I am innocent,” and if jailed, “I have no doubt that in 30 days at the most, they will kill me,” Bolsonaro said in a podcast Monday, without specifying who was behind the alleged plot.
Bolsonaro has been disqualified from holding public office until 2030 for having sought to cast doubt on Brazil’s electronic voting system, but is hopeful the ban will be overturned.
“For the moment, I am a candidate” for elections in 2026, he declared this month.
The former president has compared his situation to that of Trump, who returned to the White House this year despite his own legal troubles, and after a similar storming of the US Capitol by his own supporters in January 2021.
In an interview with the Financial Times, published Tuesday, Bolsonaro claimed Brazil “needs support from abroad” as it had become “a real dictatorship.”
Moraes and four other judges will now consider whether there is enough evidence to try the ex-president and seven alleged core co-conspirators, including former ministers and a navy commander.
There are 34 accused in total.
Security at the Supreme Court in Brasilia had been beefed up for the first day of the hearing, broadcast live.
