Bolsonaro coup proceedings before the STF

Background: January 8, 2023

On January 8, 2023, supporters of the voted-out Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the three branches of government in Brasília — Congress (Congresso Nacional), the Supreme Federal Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal, STF) and the presidential palace (Palácio do Planalto). In Brazil, the events are treated as an attempted coup d’état (tentativa de golpe de Estado). The criminal prosecution is being handled centrally before the STF.

Sentencing range and charges

The General Public Prosecutor’s Office (PGR) has charged Bolsonaro and leading associates with the attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law (Art. 359-L CPB) and with attempting a coup (Art. 359-M CPB). The maximum penalties for the two offenses (Art. 359-L: four to eight years; Art. 359-M: four to twelve years) add up to as much as 20 years; together with the additional charges (armed criminal organization, aggravated damage to property, damage to protected cultural heritage), the STF sentenced Bolsonaro to 27 years and 3 months. Since Lei 13.964/2019 (Pacote Anticrime), the absolute cap on sentence enforcement has been 40 years of imprisonment (Art. 75 CP).

Conviction in September 2025

On September 11, 2025, the First Panel of the STF, ruling in the Ação Penal AP 2.668, convicted Jair Bolsonaro over the attempted coup and sentenced him to 27 years and 3 months in prison; in the same judgment, the former ABIN director Alexandre Ramagem, among others, was sentenced to 16 years, 1 month and 15 days. The judgment has been final since November 25, 2025; Bolsonaro has been serving his sentence in the custody of the Federal Police in Brasília since November 2025. The rapporteur is Alexandre de Moraes. (The preliminary investigations into January 8, 2023 were conducted under, among others, Inq 4.921; Inq 4.879, by contrast, concerns the anti-democratic actions surrounding September 7, 2021.)

Relevance for extradition law

Should a key figure in the coup proceedings (for instance, a defendant from other strands of the case who is still at large, or a convicted person before reporting to prison) flee abroad, Brazil — despite having no treaty with Germany — would file an extradition request on the basis of general reciprocity (Section 4 IRG). Because these are offenses directed at defending the democratic rule of law, the political offense exception (Art. 5 LII CF/1988, Section 6(1) IRG) is, with high probability, to be denied in the German review — comparable to the treatment of Nazi-era offenses or genocide: it is precisely the defense of democracy that is not “political” within the meaning of the exception.

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