A general view of a session to vote on a bill, which proposes reducing the sentences for January 8, 2023, riot convictions, including former President Jair Bolsonaro's, at the Brazilian Federal Senate in Brasilia, Brazil, December 17, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
BRASILIA, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Brazil's Senate approved on Wednesday a bill to shorten the 27-year prison sentence of former President Jair Bolsonaro, although it is likely to face resistance from the Supreme Court and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The bill was approved by the lower house last week and now goes to Lula, who has not said whether he will sign it into law or veto it. It could cut the former president's prison term to just over two years.
The text also establishes sentence reductions for those convicted for their roles in a January 2023 riot, when Bolsonaro supporters invaded and ransacked the presidential palace, Supreme Court and Congress.
"This is part of our path to peace, and we must all celebrate it," said Senator Esperidiao Amin, the bill's sponsor in the Senate, following its approval in a 48-25 vote.
Last month, Bolsonaro began serving his sentence for plotting a coup against Lula after losing the 2022 election.
A preliminary version of the bill put forward by opposition right-wing lawmakers would have pardoned those involved in "political demonstrations" after Lula's election, but the bill's sponsor in the lower house ruled out granting them full amnesty.
About 2,000 people were arrested over the Brasilia attack, which drew comparisons to the January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Many of those in Brazil have been convicted by the Supreme Court of attempting a coup, among other crimes.
The bill changes the calculation of sentences to avoid cumulative punishments for multiple crimes. It also provides reduced sentences for defendants who took part in acts in a crowd context, but not as leaders or in financing positions.
Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the former president's eldest son who got his father's support this month to run for president next year, welcomed the bill's approval in a short video posted on social media.
"It wasn't exactly what we wanted, but it was what was possible within the current situation in Congress," he said.
CHALLENGES ON THE HORIZON
Despite Lula's relative silence about the bill, government ministers and lawmakers aligned with the administration have shown strong opposition to the move, signaling the president will certainly veto it.
"The government is against this proposal... for reasons that are already known: those who have attacked democracy must pay for their crimes," Institutional Relations Minister Gleisi Hoffmann said in a post on X ahead of the vote.
Lula previously said that he would wait for the bill to "get to his desk" before a decision on whether to sign it into law, adding he would take "the best decision for Brazil."
The bill was amended during an earlier vote on Wednesday in a Senate committee to make it clear that sentence reductions will only apply to those involved in acts related to the attempted coup, and not to other crimes.
Amin argued that the change did not force the bill to return to the lower house, as it was a simple adjustment to the wording.
The change in the text has raised the prospect of the bill being taken to court. The leader of Lula's Workers' Party in the lower house, lawmaker Lindbergh Farias, said he was ready to take legal action.
"What is happening in the Senate is a shame," Farias said in a post on X shortly before the conclusion of the vote in the Senate, adding he already had a request to appeal the bill in the Supreme Court.
(Reporting by Maria Carolina Marcello, additional reporting and writing by Fernando Cardoso; Editing by Natalia Siniawski, Kylie Madry and Saad Sayeed)
