Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was accused on Tuesday of encouraging sex crimes.
The decision was made by Brasilia Court judge Omar Dantas de Lima and concerns an incident that occurred in 2014 in the Chamber of Deputies, when Bolsonaro was still a federal deputy.
On this occasion, after MP Maria do Rosario of the Workers’ Party gave a speech warning of the large number of sexual abuses recorded annually in Brazil, especially against underage girls, Bolsonaro took the floor, downplayed the scourge and insulted his parliamentary colleague. Earlier, a federal lawmaker had told a startled and shocked Maria do Rosario loud and clear into the microphone that she did not need to worry about sexual impropriety because, according to Bolsonaro, she was too ugly for anyone to want to insult her. .
The crime had serious consequences inside and outside Congress, and two years later, in 2016, Bolsonaro became a defendant in two cases of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), which found that the controversial politician, in addition to committing a serious crime, personally insulting a deputy, minimized and encouraged the commission of sexual crimes. But two years later, in 2018, Bolsonaro was elected president, and between 2019 and 2022, as head of state, he enjoyed immunity for crimes committed before the start of his term, with no progress being made.
After Bolsonaro’s presidential term ended last December, the Federal Supreme Court referred several cases against the former president to the general justice system, and a judge in Brasilia decided to reopen the case. On his social media, Bolsonaro said the new trial is part of a campaign of political persecution against him.
In addition to this trial in the courts of Brazil’s federal capital, Jair Bolsonaro is being investigated in at least four cases in the Supreme Court for crimes against democracy, institutions and the electoral process, and is also accused in 15 cases in the Supreme Electoral Court of the TSE. In another case already heard, the former president was sentenced by the TSE last June to be disqualified from contesting elections for eight years. he filed an appeal, but the court rejected it. Last week he accepted that appeal and disqualified him from running, making his project of running for president again in 2026 unfeasible.
Author: Domingos Grilo Serrinha This correspondent in Brazil
Source: CM Jornal
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