Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was convicted by a Supreme Court majority on Thursday of plotting a coup to remain in power after losing the 2022 election.
The historic ruling makes Bolsonaro the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted for attacking democracy.
"This criminal case is almost a meeting between Brazil and its past, its present, and its future," Justice Carmen Lucia said before she voted to convict Bolsonaro.
There was ample evidence, she added, that Bolsonaro acted "with the purpose of eroding democracy and institutions."
Prosecutors charged Bolsonaro with attempting to stage a coup, participating in an armed criminal organisation, and seeking the violent overthrow of democratic rule. He was also accused of being implicated in violence and posing a serious threat to state assets and protected national heritage.
The far-right politician, who served as the 38th president of Brazil from 2019 to 2023, was found guilty on five counts by three members of the justice panel, coming as a major blow to the populist far-right movement he created.
Three judges so far have voted to convict the former president of five crimes. One judge acquitted him, and one remains to vote.
The conviction of Bolsonaro, a former Army captain who never hid his admiration for the military dictatorship that killed hundreds of Brazilians between 1964 and 1985, echoes legal condemnations this year for far-right leaders elsewhere, including France's Marine Le Pen and the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte.
It is likely to further enrage Bolsonaro's close ally US President Donald Trump, who has already called the case a "witch hunt" and slammed Brazil with tariff hikes, sanctions against the presiding judge, and the revocation of visas for most members of Brazil's high court.
The justices are expected to decide on a prison sentence, and how it would be served, by Friday.
Bolsonaro, who is currently under house arrest as part of another case, faces a maximum potential sentence of 40 years.
The verdict was not unanimous, with Justice Luiz Fux on Wednesday breaking with his peers by acquitting the former president of all charges.
That single vote could open a path to challenges to the ruling, potentially bringing the trial's conclusion closer to the run-up of the 2026 presidential elections, in which Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he is a candidate despite being barred from running for office.
Fux's vote also ignited a surge of righteous relief among the former president's supporters, who hailed it as a vindication.
"When coherence and a sense of justice prevail over vengeance and lies, there is no room for cruel persecution or biased judgments," Michelle Bolsonaro, the former president's wife, posted after Fux's vote.
