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TOKYO: Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Thursday he hopes “justice is served” to far-right former leader Jair Bolsonaro, who will stand trial on charges of plotting a coup.
The country’s Supreme Court on Wednesday decided to put Bolsonaro on trial in a case that could torpedo his hopes of making a Donald Trump-style political comeback.
It will be the first trial of an ex-leader accused of attempting to take power by force since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985 following two decades of military dictatorship.
Bolsonaro was not in court for the unanimous ruling by the five-judge panel, but in comments to reporters he slammed the allegations as “unfounded.”
“It seems they have something personal against me,” he said.
If convicted, the 70-year-old former army captain, who had nurtured hopes of standing in elections next year, risks a jail term of over 40 years, and political banishment.
Bolsonaro, who served a single term from 2019 to 2022, is accused of leading a “criminal organization” that conspired to keep him in power regardless of the outcome of the 2022 election.
He lost to leftist rival Lula by a razor-thin margin.
Investigators say that after Bolsonaro’s defeat, but while he was still in office, the coup plotters planned to declare a state of emergency so that new elections could be held.
He is also accused of being aware of a plot to assassinate Lula, his vice president Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes — a Bolsonaro foe and one of the judges in the current case.
“I only hope that justice is served,” Lula told reporters on Thursday during a state visit to Japan.
“It’s obvious the former president tried to stage a coup, he knows he tried to assassinate me, he knows he tried to assassinate the vice president and everyone knows what he did,” he said.
Moraes, who has called Bolsonaro a “dictator,” was the first judge to give his findings in Wednesday’s hearing.
“There are reasonable indications from the prosecution pointing to Bolsonaro as the leader of the criminal organization,” he said.
Analysts say it is unlikely Bolsonaro will be placed in preventive custody, and he will probably stand trial as a free man to avoid perceptions of election interference.
Bolsonaro will be the second former Brazilian president in under a decade to face a criminal trial.
In July 2017, then ex-president Lula was found guilty of corruption.
He spent a year and a half in prison but had his conviction annulled by the Supreme Court and went on to win back the top office.
Bolsonaro is charged with attempting a “coup d’etat,” the “attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law” and “armed criminal organization,” among other crimes.
The prosecution says the plot did not come to fruition due to a lack of support from the army high command.
Seven alleged conspirators will be tried alongside the ex-president, including former ministers and an ex-navy commander.
Bolsonaro insists he is the victim of a political plot to obstruct his return to power.
A supporter in Sao Paulo, 44-year-old financial supervisor Cleber Fonseca, said he thought this amounted to a “political persecution” as “so far, no evidence has been shown.”
Bolsonaro’s political future had already appeared in doubt before Wednesday’s ruling.
He has been disqualified from holding public office until 2030 for having sought to cast doubt on Brazil’s electronic voting system. He had been hoping to have the ban overturned in time to stand in next year’s election.
A conviction for plotting to subvert Brazil’s democracy would likely force the political right to find a new candidate.
Dubbed the “Trump of the tropics” after the US president, his political idol, Bolsonaro has been the target of multiple investigations since his turbulent years as leader of Latin America’s biggest economy.
The latest investigation yielded a dossier of nearly 900 pages.
It also mentions the disturbances of January 8, 2023, when thousands of Bolsonaro’s backers stormed the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court demanding the military oust Lula a week after his inauguration.
Bolsonaro was in the United States at the time and says he condemned the “violent acts” committed that day.
He has consistently compared his fate to that of his “friend” Trump, who returned to the White House this year despite his own legal troubles and after a similar storming of the US Capitol by his supporters in January 2021.
“I am not dead yet,” he told reporters Wednesday in Brasilia, insisting the candidate for the right in next year’s vote “will be Bolsonaro.”
Police investigating the alleged coup plot confiscated Bolsonaro’s passport last year.

CHEONGSONG, South Korea: Helicopters dumped water over a burning forest in South Korea on Thursday as authorities struggled to contain the country’s worst-ever wildfires, which have killed 26 people, forced at least 37,000 others to flee their homes and destroyed more than 300 structures.
Multiple wildfires have been raging across South Korea’s southeastern regions since last Friday. The government has mobilized thousands of people, dozens of helicopters and other equipment to extinguish the blazes, but officials said strong winds are hampering their efforts.
Korea Forest Service chief Lim Sang-seop said “a small amount” – less than 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) – of rain was expected in the area on Thursday, not enough to play a meaningful role in extinguishing the wildfires.
The fatalities include a pilot whose helicopter crashed during efforts to contain a fire and four firefighters and other workers who died after being trapped by fast-moving flames driven by strong winds.
Authorities haven’t disclosed details of the civilian dead, except that they are mostly in their 60s and 70s. They suspect human error caused several of the wildfires, including cases where people started fires while clearing overgrown grass from family tombs or with sparks during welding work.
The wildfires have burned 36,010 hectares (88,980 acres) of land in the southeast, the government’s disaster response center said in a report Thursday. Observers say that’s the worst figure of its kind in South Korea. The report said the blazes have also injured 30 people, eight of them seriously, destroyed 325 buildings and structures and forced more than 37,180 people to evacuate.
As of Thursday morning, the center said authorities were mobilizing more than 9,000 people and about 120 helicopters to battle the wildfires.
In Cheongsong, one of the fire-hit areas, thick plumes of smoke were bellowing from Juwang Mountain. Helicopters repeatedly hovered over the mountain, dropping water. The amount of smoke later appeared to have diminished.
At a Buddhist temple near the mountain, workers covered a stone pagoda and other structures with fire-resistant materials, while firefighters poured water on sites near the temple.
“Damages are snowballing,” acting President Han Duck-soo said in a televised address on Wednesday. “There are concerns that we’ll have wildfire damages that we’ve never experienced, so we have to concentrate all our capabilities on putting out the wildfires this week.”
The hardest-hit areas include Andong city and the neighboring counties of Uiseong and Sancheong, and the city of Ulsan.
On Wednesday night, strong winds and smoke-filled skies forced authorities in the southeastern city of Andong to order evacuations in two villages, including Puncheon, home to the Hahoe folk village – a UNESCO World Heritage Site founded around the 14th-15th century. Hikers were advised to leave the scenic Jiri Mountain as another fire spread closer.
Officials said earlier this week that firefighters had extinguished most of the flames from the largest wildfires in key areas, but wind and dry conditions allowed them to spread again.
Destroyed in the blazes were houses, factories, vehicles and some historic structures. In Uiseong, about 20 of the 30 structures at the Gounsa temple complex, which was said to be originally built in the 7th century, have been burned. Among them were two state-designated “treasures” – a pavilion-shaped building erected overlooking a stream in 1668, and a Joseon dynasty structure built in 1904 to mark the longevity of a king.
The Korea Forest Service has raised its wildfire warning to the highest level, requiring local governments to assign more workers to emergency response, tighten entry restrictions for forests and parks, and recommend that military units withhold live-fire exercises.