Brazil's Chamber of Deputies approved a bill early Wednesday morning aimed at reducing prison sentences for coup plotters , including former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro , who was sentenced to 27 years in prison last September.
The bill , which must now go to the Senate for discussion and eventual approval , was endorsed by 291 votes in favor, 148 against and one abstention.
The legislation proposes that the sentences for two of the crimes for which the former president was convicted (2019-2022), namely the attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law and the coup d'état, should not be combined.
If finally approved, only the more severe of the two penalties would be applied, in this case the one for coup d'état , which provides for up to 12 years in prison and which would not be added to the penalty for attempted violent abolition, which establishes up to eight years in prison.
The law proposes reducing the penalty from one-third to two-thirds when coup-related crimes are committed as part of a "mob ," as happened in the assault by hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters on the headquarters of the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court in Brasilia, the country's capital, on January 8, 2023.
According to Congressman Paulo Pereira da Silva, who introduced the bill, Bolsonaro could leave the regime closed in just over two years .
The legislator argued that the measure seeks "reconciliation" and wishes to "correct the excesses" in the sentences imposed by the Supreme Court, but "without avoiding accountability."
The leader of the deputies of the ruling Workers' Party (PT), Lindbergh Farias, rejected the bill and argued that "this chamber is embracing a coup."
An additional bit from the same session in which this happened. There was also going to be a vote for the dismissal of four congresspeople, three of them being Bolsonaro-aligned coup plotters who fled the country, and one of them an actual socialist congressman, Glauber Braga, for spurious reasons.
Shortly before the vote on this bill, he occupied the chair of the presidency in protest and was forcibly removed. Afterwards press and assistants were also violently removed from the plenary by the police and transmissions were cut. So this vote was literally made under press blackout. Can't find an English source, but maybe auto translation works with this one.
Update: the motion for his dismissal was defeated due to not getting a strict majority (257 votes), but he will still be suspended for 6 months. The key point is he will still be eligible for election next year.