Former President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to a 27 years and three months jail term after he was found guilty of plotting a military coup and this has triggered angry reactions from United States President Donald Trump.
A panel of five Supreme Court justices slammed the sentence on the 70-year-old Bolsonaro few hours after they convicted him of leading a conspiracy aimed at keeping him in power following his defeat in the 2022 election by his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Four out of the justices found the former Brazilian leader guilty while only one voted to acquit him. Bolsonaro’s lawyers described the sentence as “absurdly excessive” and said that they would file “the appropriate appeals”.
The jury also barred Bolsonaro from running for public office until 2033, after he was ordered to be put under house arrest after being deemed a flight risk. The convicted former president however did not attend the last lap of the trial in person.
He had protested in the past that the house arrest was designed to prevent him from running in the 2026 presidential election – even when he had already been barred from public office on separate charges. Bolsonaro has also called this a “witch hunt”.
US President Trump had imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, framing them as retaliation for Bolsonaro’s prosecution.
Trump said the guilty verdict on Bolsonaro was “very surprising” and compared it to his own experience: “That’s very much like they tried to do with me. But they didn’t get away with it at all.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Brazil’s Supreme Court had “unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro” and threatened to “respond accordingly to this witch hunt”.
Brazil’s foreign ministry however, condemned Trump’s reaction on X saying, “threats like the one made today by US Secretary of State Marco
Rubio, in a statement that attacks a Brazilian authority and ignores the facts and the compelling evidence on record, will not intimidate our democracy”.
Although Bolsonaro’s lawyers were poised to appeal against his conviction, legal experts believe this may prove difficult, as this is normally only possible if two out of the five justices have voted to acquit him of the charges.
