Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been ordered to start serving his 27-year sentence in a 12 sq metre bedroom in a police base in the capital, Brasília, after his conviction for plotting a coup.
The far-right populist, who governed Latin America’s largest democracy from 2019 until 2022, was handed the punishment in September after the supreme court found him guilty of leading a criminal conspiracy to stop his leftwing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, taking power.
The plot – which involved a plan to assassinate Lula and his running mate, Geraldo Alckmin – foundered after military chiefs refused to take part and the court later convicted Bolsonaro and six accomplices of trying to “annihilate” Brazilian democracy and plunge the country back into dictatorship.
On Tuesday, the supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled that Bolsonaro should start serving his sentence after the case formally ended following a period for appeals. Bolsonaro has been living under house arrest since August and was taken into preventive custody on Saturday after unsuccessfully trying to cut off his electronic ankle tag with a soldering iron.
Bolsonaro’s six co-conspirators were also ordered to start their sentences.
The former defence minister Gen Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, and the former minister for institutional security Gen Augusto Heleno were arrested and imprisoned in the Planalto Military Command in Brasília. They received sentences of 19 and 21 years respectively.
The former navy commander Adm Almir Garnier Santos, who received a 24-year sentence, was reportedly arrested by navy officials and held on a navy base.
Bolsonaro’s former defence minister, Gen Walter Braga Netto, who received a 26-year sentence, was already in custody having been arrested last December.
The former justice minister, Anderson Torres, who received a 24-year sentence, was expected to be sent to a penitentiary for police officers and other “special” prisoners in Brasília called Papudinha.
The former spy chief Alexandre Ramagem received a 16-year sentence, but recently fled to the US to avoid jail.
Bolsonaro’s incarceration has sparked jubilation among progressive Brazilians who remember his four-year government as a calamitous spell of environmental devastation, international isolation and hostility to minorities. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians died during a Covid outbreak Bolsonaro was accused of catastrophically mishandling with his anti-scientific stance.
Mustafa Baba-Aissa, the owner of a Rio de Janeiro record store, has marked the historic occasion by decorating its facade with a white banner announcing: “Bolsonaro’s in jail!”
“He’s a contemptible man who has done nothing with his life apart from living off public money … I’ve no idea how he was elected,” said the business owner, who plastered his shop’s windows with homemade posters celebrating Bolsonaro’s downfall.
Bolsonaro supporters condemned the jailing of their leader, a paratrooper-turned-politician who was elected in 2018 and posed as South America’s answer to Donald Trump.
“He’s been kidnapped,” complained Ronny de Souza, a 43-year-old Bolsonaro activist, as he stood outside the federal police base where the politician was taken last weekend after being arrested amid suspicions he was about to abscond to a foreign embassy.
Lenildo Mendes dos Santos Sertão, a politician from the Amazon who uses the nickname Delegado Caveira (“Police chief Skull”), claimed his ally was the victim of a witch-hunt. “He fought against the system and now the system has unfairly and illegally incarcerated him,” Sertão said.
Bolsonaristas vowed to battle on, even with their movement’s helmsman in prison and out of the political game. “He represents millions of people in our country,” said Souza, predicting that large numbers of followers would flock to Brasília to protest Bolsonaro’s plight.
But so far there has been no sign of mass protests or unrest, with only small groups of Bolsonaristas demonstrating and praying outside the federal police compound where he has spent the last three nights.
Experts say the former president’s influence has waned dramatically in recent months, particularly after Bolsonaro was arrested for tampering with his ankle tag.
Camila Rocha, a political scientist who studies Brazil’s new right, said recent polls revealed a clear decrease in support for Bolsonaro – both in the streets and social media. One study found that only 13% of voters now supported Bolsonaro “no matter what”. Last month, a rally in Brasília organized by Bolsonaro’s family drew about 2,000 people – far smaller than the huge crowds the former president mobilized when at the peak of his powers.
“Could there be more protests? Sure. But I think this declining trend is established,” said Rocha, who saw Bolsonaro in “a dead-end situation”.
Rocha believed Bolsonaro’s arrest was good news for the rightwing politicians hoping to inherit his votes, as well as for voters hoping to see “a reduction in anti-democratic extremism” in Brazil.
Not all of the pro-Bolsonaro schemers sentenced over the coup could be imprisoned on Tuesday. Ramagem, the former head of Brazil’s intelligence agency, Abin, recently skipped the country despite having his passport cancelled.
“I’m safe in the US,” Ramagem announced in a social media video on Monday, urging Bolsonaristas to take to the streets to defend “our greatest leader”.
On Tuesday afternoon, as the plotters began to serve their sentences, there was no immediate sign citizens would heed his call.
After visiting his father earlier in the day, Carlos Bolsonaro told reporters: “He’s psychologically devastated.”
