Messages for the Future and Settling with the Past: The Conviction of Jair Bolsonaro and His Associates

The conviction of former President Jair Bolsonaro and seven co-defendants on September 11 is a milestone for Brazilian democracy. Never before in Brazil’s constitutional and political history has a former president—along with other high-ranking federal authorities, including five senior members of the Armed Forces and a former federal police officer—been penalized for attacking the Democratic Rule of Law.

In Criminal Action 2668, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) found the defendants guilty of attempting to violently abolish the Democratic Rule of Law, coup d’état, participation in an armed criminal organization, qualified damage, and deterioration of listed property—offenses defined in the Penal Code. These crimes were established by Federal Law No. 14.197/2021 (the Law of the Democratic Rule of Law), which replaced the National Security Law (Federal Law No. 7.170/1983) enacted by Brazil’s last military government. Ironically, this legislative reform occurred during the final year of Bolsonaro’s own administration. The crux of the conviction was the action of the criminal organization formed by the ex-president and his closest advisors (Ministers of (a) Justice, (b) Defense, (c) the Civil House, the (d) Commander of the Navy, and (e, f) two intelligence agencies, in addition to the (g) president’s own assistant), who united to prevent the election results, which gave candidate Lula da Silva the right to exercise a new mandate as President of the Republic, from being respected.
During the judicial process, through extensive evidence production, it was found that (a) intelligence agencies were used to monitor political adversaries, (b) the defendants promoted public acts to generate disinformation, (c) they held public events seeking to incite the people against the Judiciary, (d) had meetings with foreign ambassadors seeking to discredit the electoral process, ( e) used of the federal highway police to hinder voter access, especially in regions more favorable to Lula da Silva’s candidates, (f) used digital militias and, even, (g) contacted with members of the Armed Forces for monitoring, arrest and eventual execution of both a Supreme Federal Court justice and the President and Vice President.
This entire set of evidence was obtained in various ways, including through a plea bargain, in which one of the members of the criminal organization, Bolsonaro’s own assistant, Colonel Mauro Cid, used to reduce his sentence, informed on his other colleagues in the criminal enterprise.
The sentences, which range from 16 to 27 years, with the longest being for Bolsonaro, understood as the leader of the criminal organization, must be served, initially, in a closed regime of prison. The exception was his assistant, who had his sentence reduced to approximately 2 years for collaborating with the investigations.

From the decision, only one appeal is possible, in accordance with the consolidated jurisprudence of the Supreme Federal Court itself, which does not aim to reverse the decision, but rather to correct any errors or gaps.
As mentioned, this is a historic milestone for the Brazilian Democratic Rule of Law, provided for in Article 1 of the Federal Constitution. This conviction, even more so, because it has as recipients high-ranking members of the Armed Forces, representatives of a government that militarized Brazilian politics as never before after the process of redemocratization and reconstitutionalization that occurred from 1985 onwards.
Many nuances could be explored in this article. Yet, in this case, the government that placed an unprecedented number of Armed Forces members in key civilian positions—and actively sought to weaken Brazil’s democratic intermediary institutions (political parties, the press, universities, and others)—produced a surprising outcome: it eroded the popular trust and prestige that the Armed Forces had long enjoyed, even throughout the country’s process of redemocratization. The involvement of six military personnel among the eight defendants in the “crucial nucleus” (the exceptions were the former president himself and a former federal police officer) of the organization that sought the coup d’état has as a backdrop a perception that circulates among the military, that politics and politicians are despicable, that the military is superior to civilians in function of the skills they possess and that society, without the military, is not prepared to govern itself efficiently and, therefore, the military is so crucial in any scenario².
This is the phenomenon of the militarization of politics, in which use is made of military mentality and procedures, their means and concepts, their personnel and their doctrines in activities of a civilian nature. A critical study (2022) reveals that the Bolsonaro government (2019-2021) overexpanded the presence of military personnel in high-decision-making positions. Proximity to the president was a notable criterion: in 2021, several key posts were occupied by his colleagues from the Agulhas Negras Military Academy (AMAN). About 86 military personnel trained at the same time as Bolsonaro (classes of 1976 to 1979) were part of the government, which, according to the analysis, influenced the defense of agendas linked to the dictatorship and marked a transition from indirect tutelage to direct military protagonism in politics³.
The Bolsonaro government, characterized by the strong presence of military personnel in civilian positions and by a rhetoric of institutional confrontation, was the most recent expression of this mentality. However, the judgment in the STF breaks with a long tradition of impunity.
At the regional Latin American level, even though the conviction takes place in a democratic period, it fits within a broader regional struggle to ensure accountability for crimes committed against democracy with the involvement of the military. A notable example is Argentina’s historic Trial of the Juntas in 1985, when the leaders of the 1976–1983 dictatorship were tried in a civilian court, resulting in life sentences for figures such as Jorge Rafael Videla and Emilio Massera. Or the Chilean case, with the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998, which opened the way for processes for crimes against humanity. Or in Peru, where former President Alberto Fujimori and other military officials were sentenced to prison for human rights violations committed after the 1992 self-coup.In this sense, it implies understanding that there is a regional movement to strengthen the Rule of Law and reject impunity. The judgment of Bolsonaro and his allies, although late in comparison with its neighbours, aligns Brazil with this trend, reinforcing the message that even the highest echelons of power, civilian or military, are subject to the law, exhausting a cycle of impunity for members of the high echelons of governments, especially when military.
Politically, the unresolved challenge is the effort by some conservative forces allied with Bolsonaro to secure a general amnesty that would grant impunity to those involved—a topic examined in a recently published article.