Brazil's top court reached a verdict Thursday that could send Jair Bolsonaro, the country's former president, to prison for decades. A majority of justices on a five-justice Supreme Court panel voted to find Bolsonaro of plotting a military coup after his election loss in 2022, the Guardian reports. Experts say he could face a sentence of up to 43 years in prison. Justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, who cast the deciding vote, said the country's institutions had survived Bolsonaro's attempt to "sow the malignant seed of anti-democracy."
Two other justices voted to convict Bolsonaro on Tuesday. A fourth, Justice Luiz Fux, voted to acquit the former president on Wednesday. Fux said that while Bolsonaro's supporters caused "damage of an Amazonian scale" in their "barbaric" storming of government buildings on Jan. 8, 2023, there was no proof Bolsonaro was behind the uprising or a plot to assassinate the election's winner, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Justice Alexandre de Moraes, one of the justices who voted in favor of conviction Tuesday.
Bolsonaro is expected to be sentenced Friday after the fifth justice on the panel delivers his verdict. The 70-year-old's lawyers plan to appeal the verdict to the full Supreme Court of 11 justices, the AP reports. Bolsonaro has not been present in court this week. He is under house arrest at his mansion in Brasilia; officials say they are worried he might seek asylum at the US Embassy. President Trump has called the prosecution a "witch hunt" and cited it as a reason for steep tariffs on imports from Brazil.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
