Jailhouse shock: Brazil coup monger Bolsonaro finally faces life behind bars

Original article by Tom Phillips Rio de Janeiro

He fought the law and the law won.

Two months after receiving a 27-year sentence for trying to “annihilate” Brazil’s democratic institutions, former president Jair Bolsonaro finally looks jail-bound.

The convicted coup-monger – who has been living under house arrest in his mansion while a series of legal procedures and appeals play out – is widely expected to be incarcerated in the coming days, amid growing speculation that he will be sent to a notorious maximum security prison.

During Bolsonaro’s four-decade political career, the far-right former paratrooper showed little compassion for Brazil’s prison population.

“Why should we give those dirtbags a good life?” he once mused. “They should just get fucked, full-fucking-stop. That’s what I reckon.”

On another occasion, Bolsonaro proclaimed: “If you don’t want to end up there, all you have to do is not rape, kidnap or rob.”

But the prospect of Bolsonaro himself winding up in the Papuda maximum security prison in Brasília has appalled allies, four of whom this week visited the complex in an apparent attempt to dissuade the supreme court from banishing him there.

Izalci Lucas, a senator from Bolsonaro’s Liberal party (PL) who was part of that quartet, said he expected the 70-year-old politician to be imprisoned in the next 10 days and feared his destination could be Papuda.

Lucas claimed Bolsonaro’s severe intestinal problems – the result of a near-fatal knife attack during the 2018 presidential campaign – meant it would be dangerous to keep the former president there. “His [health] situation is extremely serious. 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 overcrowded cells and the quality of prison meals.

While visiting Papuda, Lucas recalled seeing cells holding 40 inmates: “That’s practically one square metre per prisoner.

“We talked to the prisoners and they complain, of course, of the horrible food,” added the senator.

Lucas is not the only voice speaking out ahead of the former president’s anticipated detention.

Writing in the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, another ally, the former communications minister Fábio Wajngarten, lamented the “brutal” finale to Bolsonaro’s “impeccable” political career and claimed Brazil was about to witness “the greatest political injustice in its history”.

“It is an injustice that eats away the hearts of millions of Brazilians,” Wajngarten wrote.

That may be true given the considerable support Bolsonaro retains on the Brazilian right. But his expected jailing has also warmed the hearts of millions of others who believe he should be incarcerated for plotting to prevent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking power – and even conspiring to have him assassinated.

Reimont Otoni, a congressman for Lula’s Workers’ party (PT), said: “Nobody wants Bolsonaro to be put in a dungeon. Nobody wants Bolsonaro to be put in solitary confinement. Nobody wants Bolsonaro not to be fed or for him to have to sleep on the floor. We want him to receive dignified treatment – but dignified treatment in prison. He can’t carry on being his own prison warden for his whole life.”

Otoni was struck by how Bolsonaro allies, who have spent years celebrating the harsh treatment of prisoners, had suddenly woken up to their rights. “Only now has the extreme right – which has always claimed that human rights were not for criminals – decided to visit a prison to find out what conditions are really like,” he said.

“Bolsonaro is a criminal,” Otoni insisted, but that did not mean he deserved “humiliating, degrading treatment”.

Despite speculation that Bolsonaro could be sent to Papuda, which currently houses about 14,000 inmates, his more likely destination appears to be a nearby penitentiary for police officers and other “special” prisoners known as Papudinha (Little Papuda).

Its cells are far more comfortable than those in the main prison, although still a world away from the luxury Bolsonaro enjoyed while occupying the spectacular Oscar Niemeyer-designed presidential palace, Alvorada, about 12 miles away.

According to the Estado de São Paulo newspaper, the cell Bolsonaro could expect to occupy in Papudinha measures about 24 sq metres – about the size of two parking spaces – and features a 12 sq metre bathroom with a shower and a 12 sq metre veranda. “Bolsonaro would be allowed to have a television and even a minibar in his room as long as they were donated by his family,” the newspaper reported.

Senator Lucas condemned the rumoured plan to send the ex-president to Papuda as “a form of revenge” on the part of Alexandre de Moraes, the supreme court judge who oversaw Bolsonaro’s coup trial and will decide his fate in the coming days.

Otoni described the jailing of a former president as a sad moment – but a necessary one that represented “an affirmation of Brazilian democracy” and the country’s laws.

“The message to Brazil, and to the world, is that crime doesn’t pay,” Otoni said.