Brazilian congress passes bill to cut Jair Bolsonaro’s 27-year prison term | Jair Bolsonaro
Brazil’s congress has approved a bill to reduce the prison sentence of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison for masterminding a coup attempt to overthrow the 2022 election.
The bill, approved by the lower house last week and the senate late Wednesday, now goes to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has 15 business days to sign or veto it.
Brazil’s leftist president, who according to research was the target of an assassination plot in the middle of the coup plot, has already indicated he is likely to veto the bill, but that decision will likely be overturned later by the largely conservative congress.
Legal experts estimate that the bill would reduce the time Bolsonaro spends in confinement, currently at least six years, to just over two years, depending on sentence-mitigation mechanisms such as good behavior or reading books.
The far-right leader is serving his sentence in a special cell at Brazil’s federal police headquarters, and his lawyers are asking the high court for permission for him to undergo hernia surgery.
Although the law falls far short of the amnesty demanded by Bolsonaro and his politician sons, its approval is being celebrated by the former president’s family.
“It wasn’t exactly what we wanted… but it was what was possible.” sent Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former president, and the family’s choice for now against leftist president Lula in the 2026 elections.
The bill shortens prison time by combining sentences for two different crimes, such as “attempting a coup” and “overthrowing the rule of democratic law by violence”, but only counting the crime with a higher penalty.
Not only Bolsonaro benefits from this situation, but all his lieutenants, including the high-ranking military officers convicted for the first time for attempting a coup in Brazil and the hundreds of people who looted the capital Brasília on January 8, 2023.
The confirmation is therefore seen as a significant setback for those who widely celebrated the convictions as a sign of democratic progress in Brazil. A recent opinion poll showed It appeared that most Brazilians opposed reducing penalties.
Journalist and author Miriam Leitão, a well-known political analyst, described the bill’s passage as reopening Brazil’s “historic cycle of impunity”: “2025 would go down in history as the year Brazil first punished coup plotters, but the bill… threatens the country to repeat the past.” wrote He is in his column in the Globo newspaper.
