What you need to know about Bolsonaro’s coup plot trial

The trial of the former Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, on charges that he led a conspiracy to overturn his 2022 election loss to his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is in its final phase.

Five Supreme Court justices, who are tasked with deciding the fate of Bolsonaro and his seven co-defendants, are expected to hand down their verdicts by 12 September.

Here, we recap some of the basics you need to know about the trial.

Jair Bolsonaro, 70, is a Brazilian politician who governed the South American country from January 2019 to December 2022.

Before he entered politics, Bolsonaro was paratrooper, and in his first years as a congressman, he fiercely defended the interests of the armed forces.

He served seven terms in Congress – from 1991 to 2018 – but did not become well known beyond the confines of his home state of Rio de Janeiro until he ran for the presidency in 2018.

Many Brazilians angered by rising crime levels approved of his hard-line approach to law and order.

But what really catapulted him into public consciousness was the attack he suffered at a campaign rally just a month before the first round of the 2018 election.

A man who was later ruled mentally ill stabbed Bolsonaro in the stomach as the presidential candidate was being carried aloft by his supporters.

Bolsonaro lost 40% of his blood, and ever since, he has suffered from recurrent problems stemming from the intestinal wounds he sustained.

Bolsonaro comfortably beat the candidate of the left-wing Workers’ Party, Fernando Haddad, in the 2018 presidential election.

The Workers’ Party had been rocked by corruption scandals and many Brazilians said they were ready for a change after what had been four rocky years in Brazilian politics.

The previous elected president, Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party, had been impeached in 2016 for manipulating the budget.

Her vice-president, Michel Temer, served out the remainder of her term but was deeply unpopular.

The best-known politician in the Workers’ Party, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), was barred from running for office at the time because he had been convicted of corruption.

The Workers’ Party was left in disarray by the barring of its top candidate and ended up fielding the little-known Haddad at the last moment, who went on to lose the election to Bolsonaro.

Lula’s corruption convictions were quashed years later, and he went on to beat Bolsonaro in the 2022 election.

His presidency was characterised by his confrontational style, which his supporters praised as “unfiltered” and “genuine” but which his critics derided as “foul-mouthed”.

When Brazil became one of the countries hardest hit by the Covid outbreak, Bolsonaro’s handling of the response to the pandemic came under the spotlight. His dismissal of Covid as “a little flu” caused outrage among those who had lost family members to the virus.

Internationally, he came under criticism for cutting the budget of agencies tasked with protecting indigenous peoples and the environment, prompting some to label him as “a danger to the Amazon”.

But his conservative stance also inspired fierce loyalty among his supporters, many of whom have continued to back him throughout his legal battles, holding prayer meetings and mass demonstrations to show their continued support for him and demand he be acquitted.

Bolsonaro has changed parties multiple times throughout his political career.

He started off as a member of the Christian Democratic Party in 1988 when he successfully ran for city councillor in Rio de Janeiro.

During his time as a member of Congress, which he first entered as a member for the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB), he switched party affiliation four times.

He ran for president in 2018 for the Social Liberal Party (PSL) but quit it in 2019, promising to launch a new party.

When his newly created Alliance for Brazil failed to get the necessary support to become a registered party, he joined the Liberal Party in (PL) in November 2021, of which he remains a member.

Bolsonaro is accused of plotting a military coup.

Prosecutors say he conspired with seven of his close aides – four of them senior members of the military – to stay in power after he was beaten by Lula in the presidential election in October 2022.

The alleged plot included plans to assassinate Lula and his vice-presidential running mate, Geraldo Alckmin, and to arrest and execute Alexandre de Moraes -the Supreme Court Justice who is now overseeing Bolsonaro’s trial.

According to investigators, the alleged conspiracy was thwarted because it failed to get the backing of the army and air force commanders.

Lula was sworn in without incident on 1 January 2023.

But a week later, on 8 January, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed and vandalised government buildings in the capital, Brasília.

The security forces intervened and around 1,500 people were arrested.

Prosecutors say the rioters had been incited by Bolsonaro, whose plan, they argue, was for the Brazilian military to intervene, restore order and bring him back to power.

Bolsonaro has vehemently denied all the allegations and pointed out that he was in the United States on 8 January 2023.

Bolsonaro has said that he is the victim of a “witch hunt”.

He has long maintained that the charges are politically motivated, and are designed to prevent him from running again in the 2026 presidential election.

While Bolsonaro is already barred from running for public office until 2030 for falsely claiming that Brazil’s voting system was vulnerable to fraud, he had declared his intention to fight that ban so he could stand for a second term in 2026.

He and his lawyers have also questioned the impartiality of the Supreme Court panel tasked with judging him and his co-defendants.

Bolsonaro has long viewed the Supreme Court justice overseeing the trial, Alexandre de Moraes, as his nemesis and has called him a “dictator”, accusing him of abusing his power.

He has also pointed out that two of the other justices on the panel had close links to President Lula.

One of those justices, Cristiano Zanin, was Lula’s defence lawyer between 2013 and 2023 and in that role helped quash Lula’s corruption conviction.

Another, Flávio Dino, served as Lula’s justice minister from 2023 to 2024.

The US president has drawn parallels between what is happening to Bolsonaro and his own legal battles following his refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 US election.

“This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent – Something I know much about! It happened to me, times 10,” Trump wrote on social media in July.

But Trump did not just stop at words of support. He also raised tariffs on Brazilian imports to 50%, citing the country’s treatment of Bolsonaro as a trigger for the hike.

Trump has echoed Bolsonaro’s words, calling the trial a “witch hunt”.

He has maintained that Bolsonaro is “not guilty of anything, except having fought for THE PEOPLE” and has told prosecutors to “LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE!”

The two men also have family ties, as their sons are friends.

Bolsonaro has been following the trial from his home in Brasília.

He was placed under house arrest at the beginning of August after a police report alleged that he and his son, Eduardo, had tried to interfere in the trial.

Police said they had found a document on Jair’s mobile phone – dating back to February 2024 – which suggested he had planned to evade criminal proceedings by seeking asylum in Argentina.

They also accused Eduardo of lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of his father and banned father and son from communicating with each other.

If found guilty, Bolsonaro could be sentenced to more than 40 years in prison.

However, it is very unlikely he would be taken to jail straight after a potential guilty verdict is announced.

First, the panel of Supreme Court justices has to publish the verdict.

In similar cases, this has happened in less than a month, a legal source consulted by BBC News Brasil pointed out. But as it depends on how soon each minister reviews their vote for publication, it is hard to predict how long this could take.

Following the publication of the verdict, the defendants’ lawyers have five days to request clarifications, a lawyer told BBC Brasil.

The defendants could also appeal against the verdict – but only if it is not unanimous.

If two out of five justices on the Supreme Court panel vote “not guilty”, the defendant could demand that the full Supreme Court – meaning all 11 justices – review the verdict.