He contested the legal system and the legal system triumphed.
Two months following getting a 27-year sentence for attempting to “annihilate” Brazil’s democracy, one-time leader Jair Bolsonaro finally appears destined for incarceration.
The convicted plotter – who's been subject to residential detention in his mansion while a set of judicial steps and petitions play out – is broadly anticipated to be imprisoned in the near future, amid increasing speculation that he will be moved to a infamous high-security prison.
Throughout Bolsonaro’s 40-year public life, the right-wing former paratrooper exhibited little sympathy for the country's inmates.
“Why should we provide these dirtbags a easy time?” he once pondered. “They should just get screwed, full-fucking-stop. That's my view.”
At another time, Bolsonaro stated: “If you don’t want to finish in prison, you simply need is not sexual assault, kidnap or theft.”
However the idea of Bolsonaro himself ending up in the Papuda prison high-security prison in Brasília has shocked backers, several of whom this week visited the prison in an seeming attempt to prevent the supreme court from transferring him there.
Izalci Lucas, a senator from Bolsonaro’s Liberal party who was one of the visitors, stated he expected the elderly leader to be imprisoned in the next 10 days and was concerned his location could be Papuda.
He asserted Bolsonaro’s acute intestinal ailments – the result of a almost deadly stabbing during the 2018 presidential campaign – implied it would be hazardous to keep the former president there. “His condition is very grave. He won’t be able to handle it if they take him to Papuda … It would be awful,” said the senator, who also worried about cramped cells and the condition of prison meals.
During his tour Papuda, Lucas recalled seeing cells accommodating 40 inmates: “That is virtually one meter squared per detainee.
“We conversed to the inmates and they complain, of course, of the awful meals,” remarked the senator.
The senator isn't the lone figure speaking out before the former president’s expected imprisonment.
Writing in a leading daily, one more backer, the former cabinet member Fábio Wajngarten, bemoaned the “harsh” finale to Bolsonaro’s “impeccable” political career and alleged Brazil was about to witness “the biggest unfairness in its record”.
“It is an unfairness that eats away the spirits of millions of Brazilians,” Wajngarten wrote.
This could be true given the considerable backing Bolsonaro maintains on the right-wing. Yet his anticipated incarceration has also pleased the hearts of millions individuals who think he ought to be incarcerated for planning to stop the incoming president from taking power – and also plotting to have him murdered.
The lawmaker, a politician for the current administration's political party, stated: “Not a soul desires Bolsonaro to be sent in a hole. Nobody wants Bolsonaro to be placed in solitary confinement. No one wishes Bolsonaro not to be fed or for him to have to rest on hard ground. We want him to obtain proper treatment – but proper care in prison. He must not carry on being his personal jailer for his entire life.”
He observed how Bolsonaro supporters, who have long celebrating the tough handling of inmates, had suddenly realized to their rights. “Only now has the far-right – which has consistently claimed that basic rights were not for lawbreakers – chosen to tour a penitentiary to find out what circumstances are really like,” he said.
“Bolsonaro is a offender,” he affirmed, but that did not mean he earned “degrading, degrading treatment”.
In spite of rumors that Bolsonaro could be sent to Papuda, which now contains about 14,000 detainees, his probable destination seems to be a nearby jail for police officers and other “special” prisoners known as Papudinha (Little Papuda).
Its cells are considerably more pleasant than those in the larger jail, although nevertheless a distant from the luxury Bolsonaro enjoyed while occupying the spectacular official residence, around a short distance away.
Based on sources, the room Bolsonaro could expect to occupy in Papudinha measures about 260 square feet – roughly the size of two parking spaces – and features a 12 sq metre restroom with a bathing area and a 12 sq metre terrace. “He could be permitted to have a television and even a minibar in his room as long as they were supplied by his loved ones,” the report indicated.
He criticized the speculated idea to send the ex-president to Papuda as “an act of revenge” on the part of the judicial authority who oversaw Bolsonaro’s coup trial and will rule on his outcome in the {
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