00:00Moving on, Brazil's far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro has denied any involvement in an alleged coup plot as he took the stand for the first time in his high-stakes trial.
00:11The 70-year-old has been answering questions from lawyers and judges on his alleged role in what's being described as a criminal organization that plotted to wrest power from Lula da Silva, who narrowly beat Bolsonaro at the ballot box back in 2022.
00:25Well, for more, let's cross live now to France 24's Tim Vickery.
00:30Tim, you've been following proceedings for us there today as we saw Bolsonaro has taken the shutdown.
00:36What exactly did he have to say?
00:39Well, he, as you said, he denied the charges against him, but he did confess that after the election, he studied a number of ways, he says, inside the Constitution to overturn the election results.
00:54So we're a little bit here in the terrain of semantics.
00:58Now, the allegation of the prosecution is that the attempted coup d'etat began over a year before the election when Lula became a candidate.
01:07Lula, who won the elections at the end of 2022.
01:10And stage number one was the need, the perceived need on the part of Bolsonaro to attack the integrity of the electoral system to give a pretext for overturning the results.
01:24Stage number two is putting pressure on the armed forces to join into such a plan.
01:31Now, so far, both one and two would seem to be fairly well proved by these proceedings.
01:40Stage number three is the attempted insurrection in Brasilia on the 8th of January.
01:45Here, it's a little bit more difficult to prove direct involvement from Bolsonaro because he'd made sure that he was out of the country.
01:53He was in the United States at the time.
01:55And he is reiterating that he had no contact with those people who were who were involved in interactional activities.
02:02And he actually described them as a bunch of crazies in today's hearing.
02:07So as it stands, Bolsonaro has certainly on that charge.
02:14There doesn't seem to be a smoking gun with his involvement in the insurrection on January the 8th.
02:20But his attacks on the electoral system, which have already made him ineligible to be a candidate in next year's elections.
02:27And he reiterated those attacks in the hearing today.
02:31And also pressure being put on armed forces members, conversations with high level armed forces members looking at a way to overturn the election results.
02:43This would seem to be not very solid ground for the future of Jair Bolsonaro.
02:49The judgments is there's been a huge push to try and get this done quickly in order not to affect next year's election year.
03:00And things have gone at speed.
03:02Almost all of the defendants have now have now been heard.
03:06There will be at least two weeks for lawyers to make final considerations.
03:11The legal system goes into recess in July, but we could well get a final judgment in August.
03:18And Tim, he faces a very lengthy sentence if he is convicted at the end of all this.
03:24Just the coup conviction alone carries a sentence of up to 12 years.
03:27As you say, this coming ahead of the presidential election.
03:30So how is this trial being viewed there in Brazil?
03:34Well, I think Bolsonaro's, I don't think he anticipates victory in this particular round.
03:39And the most important thing for him will be next year's elections.
03:43And if a supporter of his were to win those elections, he would then hope for a pardon.
03:50But part of the whole impetus to conclude these hearings with due process,
03:57there is a strong memory of the rather arbitrary manner in which Lula was imprisoned and subsequently freed
04:06because the judge in question had obviously been biased and was later revealed as a right-wing activist
04:12and Bolsonaro's justice minister.
04:15So there has been an obsession with trying to follow due process,
04:19but also an obsession to try and get this done quickly in order to minimise this as an election issue in 2026.
04:28But for Bolsonaro, the results of those elections will be very, very important indeed.
04:33Tim, for now, thank you so much for all of that.
04:35That's our correspondent in Rio, Tim Vickery.
Be the first to comment