Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president, has launched an impassioned defence of his country's democracy, claiming the recent conviction of his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, had shown the world how would-be autocrats could be brought to heel. Speaking at the opening of the United Nations general assembly in New York, Lula hailed Brazil's successful effort to repel an unprecedented attack from Bolsonaro's extreme right movement.
A majority of Brazil's supreme court judges found the 70-year-old guilty on Thursday of masterminding a failed military coup designed to stop the leftwing winner of the 2022 election, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, taking office. Nowhere in the world has complete immunity against the virus of authoritarianism that creeps in insidiously, distilling its poison to contaminate freedoms and human rights, Justice Carmen Lucia Antunes Rocha told a courtroom in the capital, Brasilia, as she cast the deciding vote. Bolsonaro was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison.