Brazil’s Supreme Court on Thursday rejected former President Jair Bolsonaro’s bid to have his prison term for plotting a coup commuted to house arrest.
Defense lawyers filed the request a day earlier, arguing the far-right leader faced a “real risk of a sudden deterioration” in health and should therefore serve his 27-year sentence at home.
Bolsonaro, 70, has been hospitalized for more than a week following surgery for a groin hernia and a subsequent procedure to address persistent hiccups.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes dismissed the claim, saying there was no evidence of any decline in the former president’s condition. “Contrary to what the defense alleges, there has been no worsening of Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s health,” he wrote.
Bolsonaro, who governed Brazil from 2019 to 2022, has long struggled with health problems stemming from a 2018 campaign trail stabbing that left him with lasting abdominal complications and required multiple major surgeries.
Bolsonaro is expected to be discharged from the hospital Thursday, according to his doctors.
He will then return to the small room where he is serving his sentence at a federal police facility in Brasilia.
In September, Brazil’s Supreme Court found Bolsonaro guilty of conspiring to stay in power after narrowly losing the 2022 election to leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Prosecutors said the plot, which included a plan to assassinate Lula, failed because it lacked support from senior military leaders.
Bolsonaro, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, dismissed the trial as a “witch hunt” aimed at preventing him from running for president again in 2026.
He had been under house arrest until shortly before the start of his prison term in November.
Bolsonaro was detained and sent to prison after he used a soldering iron on his ankle monitoring bracelet, an act the court viewed as an escape attempt.
Bolsonaro said his actions were the result of medication-induced paranoia.
The Supreme Court last month rejected his appeal against the conviction.
His supporters have found more success in the conservative-controlled Congress, which has passed a law that could reduce Bolsonaro’s sentence to just over two years.
Lula has vowed to veto the law, but Congress can override the veto.
Bolsonaro’s conviction has reshaped the race for the October 2026 election.
With his prospects for a political comeback fading, the right-wing leader has tapped his son Flavio Bolsonaro, a 44-year-old senator, to succeed him as the figurehead of Brazil’s conservative movement.
To win, the younger Bolsonaro would need to defeat rival conservative contenders as well as Lula, now 80, who has signaled he may seek a fourth term.
