🔗 Share this article

He contested justice and the law won.

Two months subsequent to getting a 27-year sentence for attempting to “destroy” Brazil’s political system, ex-president Jair Bolsonaro now seems jail-bound.

Anticipated Incarceration

The adjudicated plotter – who has been subject to house arrest in his estate while a set of legal procedures and petitions unfold – is largely predicted to be jailed in the near future, amid mounting speculation that he will be transferred to a infamous maximum security penitentiary.

Previous Statements on Prisoners

Over Bolsonaro’s four-decade political career, the right-wing former soldier displayed minimal mercy for Brazil’s inmates.

“Why should we give these scoundrels a easy time?” he once pondered. “They should just get messed, end of story. That's my opinion.”

On another occasion, Bolsonaro proclaimed: “Unless you desire to wind up behind bars, you simply need is not rape, abduction or theft.”

Incarceration Location Debate

However the possibility of Bolsonaro himself winding up in the Papuda maximum security prison in Brasília has appalled backers, a group of four this week toured the complex in an seeming bid to prevent the high court from transferring him there.

Izalci Lucas, a lawmaker from Bolsonaro’s allied group who was among that group, claimed he predicted the septuagenarian politician to be imprisoned in the next 10 days and feared his location could be Papuda.

The senator argued Bolsonaro’s acute digestive ailments – the outcome of a near-fatal knife attack during the last political campaign – implied it would be dangerous to keep the ex-leader there. “His health is highly critical. He will not be able to manage if they move him to Papuda … It could be terrible,” said the senator, who also expressed concern about cramped cells and the quality of prison meals.

While visiting Papuda, Lucas remembered observing cells holding forty prisoners: “It's practically one square meter per detainee.

“We talked to the inmates and they grumble, naturally, of the horrible food,” added the senator.

Supporters Voice Concerns

Lucas is not the sole person expressing views before the ex-leader's anticipated imprisonment.

Penning in a leading publication, another ally, the former government official Fábio Wajngarten, lamented the “brutal” finale to Bolsonaro’s “flawless” time in office and alleged Brazil was about to experience “the biggest unfairness in its history”.

“It represents an injustice that gnaws the souls of countless of Brazilians,” he stated.

Mixed Popular Reaction

It is possibly true given the considerable following Bolsonaro holds on the right-wing. Yet his anticipated jailing has also gladdened the feelings of millions others who think he deserves to be imprisoned for plotting to block the incoming president from taking power – and even plotting to have him killed.

Reimont Otoni, a congressman for the current president's allied group, stated: “Nobody wants Bolsonaro to be sent in a dungeon. Not a soul wants Bolsonaro to be put in solitary confinement. No one wants Bolsonaro to lack food or for him to have to rest on hard ground. We want him to get respectful treatment – but proper care behind bars. He cannot continue being his own prison warden for his lifetime.”

Otoni was struck by how Bolsonaro supporters, who have for a long time applauding the harsh treatment of convicts, had abruptly realized to their rights. “Recently has the conservative fringe – which has repeatedly argued that human rights were not for criminals – chosen to visit a penitentiary to find out what situations are truly like,” he stated.

“He is a offender,” the congressman maintained, but that did not mean he merited “degrading, demeaning handling”.

Potential Incarceration Environment

Despite talk that Bolsonaro could be moved to Papuda, which currently contains about fourteen thousand detainees, his expected destination appears to be a adjacent penitentiary for police officers and other “special” inmates called Papudinha (Small Papuda).

Its cells are far more pleasant than those in the primary facility, although still a world away from the opulence Bolsonaro enjoyed while residing in the spectacular leader's home, around a short distance away.

Based on information, the cell Bolsonaro could anticipate occupy in Papudinha has about 260 square feet – roughly the size of two parking spaces – and features a 12 sq metre bathroom with a shower and a 12 square meter balcony. “Bolsonaro would be permitted to have a television and also a minibar in his cell as long as they were donated by his family,” the report stated.

Ideological Comments

He criticized the talked-about idea to send the ex-president to Papuda as “a type of revenge” on the part of the supreme court judge who oversaw Bolsonaro’s legal case and will determine his fate in the {