DST News: Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered former president Jair Bolsonaro to start serving his 27-year and three-month prison sentence for orchestrating a plot to overturn the 2022 election. Justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled on Tuesday that the case had reached its final judgment, leaving no further avenues for appeal. Bolsonaro, 70, was found guilty in September of leading a conspiracy to keep himself in power after losing to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

He has been held in a federal police facility in Brasília since Saturday after being declared a flight risk. Court documents revealed he attempted to tamper with his ankle monitor using a soldering iron, which he blamed on “medicine-induced paranoia.”

The Supreme Court previously found that Bolsonaro was aware of plans to assassinate Lula, Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin, and Justice Moraes. The failed conspiracy never secured military support, and Lula took office peacefully on 1 January 2023. A week later, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings—an attack the court said he incited.

Bolsonaro is barred from holding public office until 2060. Several former senior aides, including ex-security minister Gen Augusto Heleno and former defence minister Gen Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, were also ordered to begin serving their sentences.

Source: BBC