A series of investigations, complaints and up to 16 civil and criminal legal proceedings already in progress await former President Jair Bolsonaro when he returns to Brazil. The accusations against him will be a counterweight to his intention to run for political office again, especially for the presidency; however, the chances of him ending up in prison are slim.
according to the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, the only possibility of Bolsonaro’s arrest would be if he tried to obstruct ongoing investigations, such as destroying evidence or intimidating witnesses. In his case, a second-instance conviction, like the one that landed current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in jail in 2018, has expired. Bolsonaro will now have the opportunity to appeal in all the judicial processes that he has open until a final sentence is reached.
The former president currently does not hold any public office, so he has lost the privileges of immunity and the possibility of being tried in the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil. The minister [jueza] of this court, Carmen Lucia Antunes Rochahas distributed some of the processes against Bolsonaro between courts of first and second instance, which can leave him in a situation of greater vulnerability as he is in the hands of various judges, who can issue different sentences.
In 2019, for example, a judge from Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Bretas, issued an arrest warrant for former President Michel Temer for a corruption case linked to Operation Car Wash, leading him to spend four days behind bars, two months after leaving office. post.
Most of the accusations against Bolsonaro that Judge Antunes Rocha has sent to the courts refer to anti-democratic statements that the far-right politician made at the celebrations of the independence of Brazil.on September 7, 2021. “Either the head of this power frames his own or this power will suffer what we do not want,” Bolsonaro said on that occasion, in a clear hint to the judiciary, whose headquarters suffered occupation attempts that year and was attacked on August 8. January. Precisely, Bolsonaro must also answer for his influence in these acts of vandalism, in which his followers invaded other headquarters of national sovereignty in Brazil, such as the Congress and the Planalto Palace.
political interference
These processes are in the hands of Judge Alexandre de Moraes, president of the Electoral Tribunal, who has stood out as one of the strongest defenders of democracy. Moraes follows at least six investigations into Bolsonaro, including the leak of confidential Federal Police investigation data, political interference in the PF, the spread of fake news and his statements during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In September of last year, the Permanent Court of Peoples (TPP) condemned Bolsonaro for a crime against humanity and a serious violation of human rights for his actions as president during the pandemic. The jurist Eugenio Raul Zaffaroni, former Minister of Justice of Argentina, judged that Bolsonaro’s conduct “willfully caused the death of several tens of thousands of people” by rejecting the policy of isolation, prevention and vaccination. The decision has no legal effects, but it can be used in case of progress in international processes.
In January, the revelation of the death of 570 children of the Yanomami ethnic group due to neglect and malnutrition, throughout the four years of the Bolsonaro Government, and the discovery of a serious humanitarian crisis among this population of the Amazon, has once again brought to debate the possibility of a charge of genocide.
