Bolsonaro’s lawyers say acquittal ‘imperative’

THE defence team of Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro told the close of his trial for coup plotting on Wednesday that an acquittal was “imperative” to avoid what it presented as a potential miscarriage of justice.

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“An acquittal is absolutely imperative so that we don’t have our version of the Dreyfus case,’ lawyer Paulo Cunha Bueno told the Supreme Court, referring to the infamous case of a Jewish French army captain wrongly convicted of treason in 1894.

Bolsonaro, also a former army captain, risks up to 43 years in prison if convicted of trying to cling onto power after losing 2022 elections to his leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The court is set to deliver its verdict next week in a case which has sparked the ire of US President Donald Trump, an ally of Bolsonaro.

The Trump administration has imposed 50% tariffs on a range of Brazilian goods and sanctioned the judge presiding over what the US leader has called a “witch-hunt’”.

This week, the judge presiding over Bolsonaro’ trial, Alexandre de Moraes, accused the 70-year-old former far-right leader of seeking to install a “true dictatorship”