Brasília (AFP) - Brazil’s Supreme Court on Thursday convicted firebrand ex-president Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a coup, sealing his fate with a dramatic 4-1 vote that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

All but one judge found the 70-year-old guilty of plotting to overthrow Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva following his October 2022 election defeat by the left-winger.

US President Donald Trump, a staunch Bolsonaro ally who previously slammed the trial as a “witch hunt” and levied steep tariffs on Brazil as punishment, called the verdict “very surprising.”

“I thought he was a good president of Brazil, and it’s very surprising that that could happen. That’s very much like they tried to do with me, but they didn’t get away with it at all,” Trump told reporters, calling Bolsonaro “a good man.”

While the Supreme Court had already garnered the simple majority of three votes needed for his conviction at the fourth vote, it only become final after the last of the five judges issued his decision.

“An armed criminal organization was formed by the defendants, who must be convicted based on the factual circumstances I consider proven,” the fifth judge, Cristiano Zanin, Lula’s former lawyer, said.

Bolsonaro’s seven co-accused, including former ministers and military chiefs, were also convicted.

Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president from 2019-2022, could be sentenced to more than 40 years after being found guilty on all five charges.

The former army captain claims he is the victim of political persecution.

Reacting to the third conclusive “guilty” vote earlier, Bolsonaro’s senator son Flavio Bolsonaro wrote on X: “They’re calling a trial a process whose outcome everyone already knew before it began.”

- ‘Political’ -

Bolsonaro’s conviction came after one of the biggest, most divisive trials in Brazil’s recent history, which ended with a nail-biting vote that stretched over four days.

The only judge to return a not guilty finding, Luiz Fux, dismissed the trial as “political.”

But the court’s sole female judge, Carmen Lucia, argued that “the law must apply equally to all” as she returned a guilty finding.

Bolsonaro himself did not attend the verdict hearings in the capital Brasilia, instead following the proceedings from his residence, where he is under house arrest.

Across the nation, Brazilians were glued to the proceedings on TV and social media.

In one Brasilia bar, patrons watching the trial on a giant screen burst into applause after he was convicted.

“After so much waiting, this despicable individual is being sent to jail,” translator Virgilio Soares, 46, said.

But Germano Cavalcante, a 60-year-old civil engineer, called the trial “unfair.”

Apart from heading a “criminal organization,” Bolsonaro was charged with knowing of a plan to assassinate Lula, his vice president Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre Moraes.

He was also convicted of inciting the violent 2023 storming of the Supreme Court, presidential palace and Congress in Brasilia by hundreds of his supporters, a week after Lula was inaugurated as his successor.

The rioters called in vain for the military to oust Lula.

- A country divided -

The trial drove a deep wedge through Brazilian society, between those primarily on the left who saw it as a vital test of the country’s democracy, from those mainly on the right who viewed it as a political show trial.

Moraes, a champion of the Brazilian left, charged on Monday as he cast his vote that Brazil – which emerged from two decades of brutal military rule in 1985 – “nearly returned to a dictatorship” due to Bolsonaro.

Fearing his conviction, the ex-president’s allies have been pushing Congress to pass an amnesty law to save him from prison.

The case has led to an unprecedented crisis in relations between the United States and longtime ally Brazil.

Besides the tariffs punishment, Washington has also sanctioned Moraes and other Supreme Court judges.