Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said today in Tokyo that he "can only hope that justice will be done" in the trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro, accused of attempted coup d'état.
It is obvious that the former president tried to organize a coup d'état in the country, that he tried to assassinate me and the vice president (Geraldo Alckmin), and everyone knows what he did," Lula said in Tokyo, on the last day of a state visit to Japan.
On Wednesday, Brazil's Supreme Court handed down a historic decision, exposing former President Bolsonaro to a heavy prison sentence and undermining his ambitions of returning to power.
"He has no way of proving his innocence," Lula said, adding that if Bolsonaro "is found innocent in this case, let him be declared innocent. If he is found guilty, let him be punished."
Absent from the hearing on Wednesday, the former far-right president (2019-2022) told reporters in Brasília that he rejects the "very serious and unfounded" accusations.
"It seems they have something personal against me," he said.
Threatened with a cumulative sentence that could exceed 40 years in prison, Bolsonaro said he was the victim of the "greatest political and judicial persecution in the history of Brazil."
A self-confessed nostalgic for the dictatorship, the 70-year-old former army captain is accused by prosecutors of being the "leader" of a "criminal organization" that engineered a conspiracy to stay in power "at all costs" after the October 2022 elections, which he ended up losing to the current left-wing president, Lula da Silva.
According to investigators, after the defeat and before the transfer of power, the alleged conspirators worked on a decree to call for new elections elections, but also planned to assassinate Lula, his vice-president-elect Geraldo Alckmin and Alexandre de Moraes, a judge of the Supreme Federal Court.
"The dictatorship thrives on the death, not only of society, not only of democracy, but of human beings of flesh and blood", stressed Judge Cármen Lúcia when voting in favor of the trial.
In addition to sending the case to trial, the judges also decided to open a case against the other seven members of the "crucial core" of the alleged conspiracy. Among them are several former ministers, Walter Braga Netto (Defense), his candidate for vice-president in 2022, and Anderson Torres (Justice), as well as the former commander of the Navy, Almir Garnier Santos.
According to the prosecution, the coup did not happen due to a lack of support from the high military command.
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