Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered former President Jair Bolsonaro to start serving a 27-year sentence for overseeing a failed plot to hold onto power after losing the country’s last election.
After the nation’s top court rejected an initial appeal by Mr. Bolsonaro’s lawyers challenging his sentence, the court ruled that he will begin serving his sentence at a federal police facility in Brasília, the capital.
Mr. Bolsonaro is already in custody at that same facility. He was arrested on Saturday after he told the police that he took a soldering iron to the ankle monitor tracking his movements while under house arrest, setting off suspicions that he was trying to flee. Mr. Bolsonaro blamed his medications for causing “hallucinations” and “paranoia” that the device might be used to eavesdrop on him.
The former president’s defense team had asked the court to allow Mr. Bolsonaro to serve his sentence at home because of health problems linked to complications from a stabbing attack in 2018.
The court rejected the request after he tampered with his ankle monitor. Once Mr. Bolsonaro begins serving his sentence, his defense team plans to try again, submitting medical evidence to support its argument.
In September, Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted Mr. Bolsonaro and seven of his allies of organizing a vast conspiracy to overturn the 2022 elections and assassinate the winner, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, before he took office as president.
Mr. Bolsonaro had been under house arrest since August, wearing an ankle monitor and watched closely by the police because the Supreme Court justice overseeing the case deemed him a flight risk.
Analysts widely expect Mr. Bolsonaro to remain in prison for a short time before the Supreme Court ultimately allows him to serve out the rest of his sentence at home, though it is not yet clear just how long he may spend behind bars.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s defense team has argued that his poor health, which includes frequent attacks of hiccups and vomiting, “makes his safe stay in a prison environment impossible” because he needs constant medical care.
“He should serve the time he was given,” said Antonio Carlos de Almeida Castro, a veteran Brazilian lawyer who has defended politicians and business moguls. “But given that he appears to be very ill, he may have the right to house arrest.”
This is not the first time a former Brazilian president has faced prison. Mr. Lula, who was in office from 2003 to 2010, was sentenced to more than a decade in prison in 2017 for receiving kickbacks from a construction company, though his conviction was later tossed out and he was freed after serving 580 days in prison.
Another former president, Fernando Collor, who led the country from 1990 to 1992, began serving a nearly nine-year prison sentence for corruption earlier this year, though he was moved to house arrest after just over a week because of his health.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s conviction relied on troves of evidence showing that he and his inner circle had spent months undermining voters’ confidence in Brazil’s elections systems and then, after he narrowly lost to Mr. Lula, attempted to keep him in power.
The plans included dissolving the Supreme Court, annulling the election result and giving the military sweeping powers. Beside planning to assassinate Mr. Lula, prosecutors said the plot also involved planning to kill a Supreme Court justice who had overseen Mr. Bolsonaro’s case.
Mr. Bolsonaro denied the charges and said he had no knowledge of any assassination plot. He claimed that he sought ways within Brazil’s Constitution to correct what he claimed was a stolen election, though a review by Brazil’s military found no evidence of electoral fraud.
After Mr. Lula became president, Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed government buildings in January 2023, a destructive rampage that echoed the U.S. Capitol riot two years earlier.
Lis Moriconi contributed research.
Ana Ionova is a contributor to The Times based in Rio de Janeiro, covering Brazil and neighboring countries.
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