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Brazil’s Supreme Court could decide on Thursday whether former President Jair Bolsonaro is guilty of masterminding a coup to stay in power following the country’s tense 2022 presidential elections.

Hailed by some Brazilians as “historic”, the landmark case has set the whole country on edge, with tens of thousands rallying in support of the populist former leader, and has also escalated tensions between Latin America’s largest nation and Washington.

Bolsonaro faces a five-count charge related to attempts to stage a coup, which he denies. The 70-year-old claims the trial is a politically motivated attempt by the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to prevent him from seeking another term in the 2026 elections. US President Donald Trump, who counts Bolsonaro as an ally, has echoed that argument and has tried to punish Brazil with higher trade tariffs.

At least three of the five justices of the Supreme Court panel ruling on the case have already voted this week. The final two are expected to cast their votes on Thursday. Sentencing is likely as early as Friday.

Here’s what we know about the trial:

What is this trial about?

Bolsonaro, alongside seven of his close allies, faces several charges of attempting to overturn the October 2022 presidential elections after he lost to Lula, who also served as president between 2003 and 2011.

Specifically, Bolsonaro faces five charges, including: attempting to stage a coup, involvement in an armed criminal organisation, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, and two more counts involving destruction of state property during violent protests by his supporters on January 8, 2023.

Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Celso Vilardi, said he is not guilty of the charges, arguing that, although Bolsonaro assembled top cabinet and military officials to discuss an emergency decree aimed at suspending the elections, the decree was ultimately not issued, and Bolsonaro eventually ordered a transition of power to Lula.

The former leader could face up to 40 years in jail if convicted. The coup plot charge alone carries a 12-year sentence.

Others accused alongside Bolsonaro include former Defence Minister and Bolsonaro’s 2022 running mate Walter Braga Netto, former Defence Minister Paulo Sergio Nogueira, Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp Mauro Cid, military adviser Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, former Justice Minister Anderson Torres, former naval chief Almir Garnier Santos, and ex-police officer Alexandre Ramagem.

Where is Bolsonaro now?

Since August, Bolsonaro has remained under house arrest at a heavily guarded building in the capital, Brasilia. He is banned from social media and has only limited access to communications. In 2023, the country’s electoral commission also barred him from running for office until 2030, citing abuse of power.

Supporters of the president have held protests in recent days against what they say is a witch-hunt by the Lula government. There are fears that violent protests could break out if a guilty verdict is reached.

Others, though, have hailed the trial, calling it “historic”, as the first time the country has attempted to hold a leader accused of attempting a coup accountable.

How have judges voted so far?

The Supreme Court hearing began deliberations on a verdict on September 9, and is set to conclude on September 12.

To reach a guilty verdict, three of the five judges must support a conviction.

Three of the five Supreme Court justices had already voted by Thursday. Two more are expected to cast their votes on Thursday, barring adjournments.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the ruling and is considered by Bolsonaro’s supporters to be a major adversary driving the trial, was the first to vote in favour of a conviction on Thursday.

Moraes, in a five-hour-long statement, said that under Bolsonaro’s rule, “Brazil almost returned to a dictatorship,” referring to the military rule that lasted for 21 years from 1964 to 1985.

The judge said there was evidence of a Bolsonaro-led plot, codenamed Operation Green and Yellow Dagger, to assassinate Lula, his vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, as well as Justice Moraes. Those efforts, he said, culminated in Bolsonaro supporters attacking Congress, the Presidential Palace, and the Supreme Court in violent protests on January 8, 2023.

A second justice, Justice Flavio Dino, has also voted to convict Bolsonaro.

Then, on Wednesday, Justice Luiz Fux broke from his colleagues in a surprise move and instead called for the case to be annulled because, he said, it had failed to follow due process.

Fux argued that the Supreme Court had an “absolute lack of jurisdiction” over the case. He said that, because Bolsonaro and his fellow accused are no longer political appointees, the case should have been heard by a lower court.

He also argued that, once the Supreme Court had become involved, the case should have been handled by the full panel of 11 justices, rather than a five-member panel. The defence team, he added, had not been given enough time to prepare its case, while prosecutors were armed with what he called a “tsunami of data” amounting to “billions of pages”.

Fux, however, did rule against two allies of the former president – Mauro Cid and Netto – on the charge of violent abolition of the democratic rule of law.

The two remaining judges must now cast their votes – only one more conviction vote is needed to seal Bolsonaro’s fate.

The two judges – Justice Carmen Lucia and Justice Cristiano Zanin  – were both appointed by Lula: Judge Lucia during Lula’s first term as president in 2006, and Judge Zanin in 2023. Many experts anticipate that they will vote to convict Bolsonaro. However, Judge Lucia has in the past voted against Lula, when he was on trial between 2017 and 2021 on money laundering charges. Lula was eventually acquitted.

Why is Brazil divided on the Bolsonaro case?

The Bolsonaro trial has deepened bitter divides between the former leader’s millions of supporters and those who believe his prosecution is justified.

This past week, as the Supreme Court trial was continuing, Bolsonaro’s supporters mobilised across the country in protests. They demanded that the former leader and his fellow accused be granted an amnesty, and accused the government of failing to allow a fair trial. Bolsonaro’s supporters are also demanding he be allowed to run for presidency again in 2026, something the former leader has also called for.

On Sunday, Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, addressed chanting, flag-toting crowds of supporters in Sao Paulo. In tears, she told the throng that the trial had brought “humiliation” to her family. The date coincided with Brazil’s September 7 Independence Day, when the country gained freedom from Portugal in 1822.

Similarly, thousands have gathered in counterprotests in recent days, calling for Bolsonaro’s conviction and denouncing Washington’s support – under Trump – for the former leader.

In the capital, Brasilia, meanwhile, Lula’s Independence Day message was that Brazil is “nobody’s colony” and would not accept orders from anyone.

How might the US respond when a verdict is reached?

On Tuesday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt suggested the US could react strongly – economically or even militarily – if there is a guilty verdict. She told a news conference: “This is a priority for the administration and the president is unafraid to use the economic might, the military might, of the United States to protect free speech around the world.” She did not provide any details, however.

In a response, Gleisi Hoffman, a Brazilian lawmaker and chief minister of the country’s Secretariat for Institutional Relations, condemned Leavitt’s statement, saying that the US was threatening to “invade Brazil to free Jair Bolsonaro from prison”.

“This is utterly unacceptable,” Hoffman said in a statement on X. “And yet [the US] claims to be defending ‘freedom of expression’. Only if it’s the freedom to lie, to coerce the Justice system, and to plot a coup d’etat; those are indeed the crimes for which Bolsonaro and his accomplices are being tried in due legal process.”

How has the Trump administration supported Bolsonaro?

Trump has repeatedly defended Bolsonaro – and has attempted to penalise Brazil for the trial of his ally.

In social media posts in July, the US president drew parallels between the Bolsonaro trial and his own prosecution for alleged involvement in an attack by protesters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, after he lost the 2020 US presidential election to Joe Biden.

Trump also wrote a letter to President Lula, accusing him of mistreating Bolsonaro. The trial against Bolsonaro, he said, was an “international disgrace”.

In July, the US Department of State sanctioned Justice de Moraes, who is leading the Supreme Court panel for the trial. It accused him of suppressing freedom of expression and politicising prosecutions, including that of Bolsonaro.

De Moraes has been barred from obtaining a US visa, and any US properties he may own were ordered to be confiscated. The judge’s “allies” in the Supreme Court, as well as “certain family members”, have also been barred from US visas, although the State Department did not mention names.

On August 1, Trump slapped Brazil with a 50 percent trade tariff, citing the charges against Bolsonaro as part of the reason.

Trump stated that the high tariffs were “due in part to Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans”, saying that the verdict impacted not only Brazilians, but Americans, too.

Trump’s global trade war has primarily targeted countries that run a large trading surplus with the US. Brazilian imports from the US, however, already outweigh its exports; Washington had a trading surplus of $28.6bn in goods and services with Brazil in 2024.

Brazil’s Lula called the tariff escalation “authoritarian” but has not imposed reciprocal levies.

Could the US really use military force?

Leavitt’s suggestion that the US would not rule out military options against Brazil comes against the backdrop of the recent deployment of US naval forces to the Caribbean.

The US says its military forces are in the region to counter drug trafficking. However, the deployment comes as US threats against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom US President Donald Trump’s administration has accused of being closely linked with drug trafficking groups, have ramped up.

Conservative American activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on Wednesday at a university event in Utah.

Kirk, 31, was a close ally of United States President Donald Trump and was widely credited for helping galvanise support for the Republican Party and Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement among American youth, including through regular engagements with university students.

He was the cofounder of the conservative youth organisation Turning Point USA. Here is a closer look at Kirk’s influence on young people and how it bolstered support for Trump and the MAGA movement:

Who was Charlie Kirk?

The conservative media personality grew up in Chicago and attended a community college there before dropping out to pursue political activism.

He became friends with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, and the pair travelled together to Greenland in January. President Trump had made clear by then that he wanted to absorb the Danish territory into the US even though Denmark and Greenland had both pushed back.

Kirk was an early supporter of Vice President JD Vance while Trump was deciding on his running mate for the 2024 election.

A vocal critic of mainstream media, Kirk engaged in culture-war debates surrounding race, gender and immigration. He amplified and backed Trump’s unfounded claim that the 2020 election was stolen after Joe Biden won the vote.

Kirk has also been accused of holding racist, Islamophobic and misogynistic positions.

Kirk wrote a post on his X account on Tuesday in response to the fatal, unprovoked stabbing of a white woman by a Black man. He said: “The numbers tell the truth. Black attacks on white people happen 3X more often than white on black crime, despite blacks being only 13 percent of the population.”

On September 1, he wrote on his X account that “America does not need more visas for people from India. Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India.”

After the current war in Gaza broke out on October 7, 2023, after a Hamas-led attack on Israel, Kirk spoke at an event expressing solidarity with Israel. “The Muslims’ playbook is: surprise attack, use children and women as human shields, build international support that can then build consensus against Israel, and people will forget that Israel was attacked in the first place.”

In August, musician Taylor Swift got engaged to American football player Travis Kelce. During one of his events, Kirk said getting married might make Swift more conservative, urging her to have children. Kirk said: “Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.”

Kirk was a firm supporter of the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, which grants Americans the right to bear arms. In an interview this year, he said that “it’s worth it” to have “some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment”.

His death prompted condolence messages from Trump, his MAGA base, former US presidents, politicians from both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, other public figures and world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Kirk’s shooter is still at large, and a manhunt for his killer continues.

What is Turning Point USA?

Kirk cofounded the nonprofit conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA in 2012 when he was 18 years old. He started it with Bill Montgomery, an American conservative activist who died aged 80 in 2020.

Turning Point has more than 850 chapters on US college campuses, where the organisation conducts discussions and conferences over issues such as immigration, abortion rights – Kirk was against them – and race.

The group also hosts several podcasts, including The Charlie Kirk Show, which reached more than 500,000 listeners each month.

When Kirk was shot at Utah Valley University, he was on the first visit of his multicampus Turning Point tour.

In 2019, a British offshoot of the group called Turning Point UK was formed. There is also an Australian offshoot, called Turning Point Australia.

Did Kirk help MAGA?

While the extent of his influence is hard to measure definitively, the MAGA movement, Trump and independent experts all believe he played a crucial role in building support for the president and his political campaign.

“Charlie Kirk had a significant political and mobilising influence among the Trumpist youth,” Ico Maly, an associate professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera. Maly teaches courses about digital media and has written about far-right activism.

Maly explained that Kirk’s impact was the result of how he used digital culture in his ideological struggle.

“It was his embrace of digital culture that laid the foundation for his mobilisation power in support of the Trump agenda. His campus rallies were not merely offline performances. They reproduced a familiar digital format: ‘Ask me anything,’” Maly said.

Turning Point USA invested millions of dollars in a “chase the vote” initiative, building relationships with Republican voters in battleground states, registering these voters and assisting them with voting.

What the numbers show

Before the 2024 US presidential election, Kirk visited 25 college campuses on a tour called You’re Being Brainwashed to mobilise young voters. This tour was “hailed by some as the single most important reason for a surge in Trump’s support among the youngest voters”, Australia-based writer Daryl McCann told Al Jazeera. McCann writes about conservative US politics for the Quadrant, Spectator Australia and Salisbury Review publications.

While it is impossible to know how much Kirk’s efforts contributed, Trump benefitted from a clear bump in support among young voters in 2024.

He won 49 percent of the votes of men aged 18 to 49 nationally, up from 43 percent in 2020 and 46 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center.

In 2024, Trump’s Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, won 48 percent of the votes of young men. In 2020, Biden won 53 percent of the vote share for this group, and in 2016, Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton won 43 percent of this vote share.

In 2024, Trump won a 42 percent vote share of women aged 18 to 49. While Harris won 56 percent of the votes of this group, his vote share among young women was up from 38 percent in 2020 and 27 percent in 2016.

In the 2024 election, Trump won all seven key battleground states, including Arizona, where he defeated Harris by 187,000 votes. Last year, CNN reported an unnamed source with knowledge of the matter as saying Turning Point USA’s efforts helped bring 125,000 irregular voters in Arizona to the polls. According to CNN, Turning Point drove voters to polling places and helped them with mail-in ballots.

In May, Trump lauded Kirk’s contributions, saying they helped him win the vote of young people in 2024.

“And Charlie Kirk will tell you, TikTok helped, but Charlie Kirk helped also,” Trump said during an Oval Office ceremony.

How did Kirk manage to do this?

The very positions that turned him into a hate figure for some people helped him draw supporters to the MAGA movement too, experts said.

“His mobilisation power was fundamentally rooted in controversy. It is precisely this controversy that made him highly visible online, allowing him to exert significant ideological influence,” Maly said.

McCann added: “Kirk succeeded because he was charismatic, funny and tore apart wokeist ideology. Turning Point USA’s insurgent outreach to Gen Z perfectly complemented Trump’s populist pitch to the entire nation, which asserted that a coterie of insiders – the ‘enemy within’ – were betraying ordinary Americans.”

A host on Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 distributed sweets and champagne to celebrate the Israeli attack on Hamas leaders meeting in Doha, Qatar.

Qatar’s prime minister called Israel’s strike on Doha “state terror” in an interview with CNN, demanding Netanyahu face justice. The attack has sent shock waves across the region, with states that recently explored normalisation with Israel now rallying around Qatar.

At least 22 Palestinians, including two young children, are among the latest deaths in Israel’s round-the-clock bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, adding to the 72 Palestinians killed over the last 24 hours, medical sources have said.

Ten of those who were killed since dawn on Thursday were in Gaza City, where Israeli forces are currently conducting a siege and launching daily strikes on residential buildings as they prepare a major offensive against the Palestinian group Hamas.

The Times of Israel, citing Israeli military figures, reported that a total of 200,000 Palestinians have already been forced out of Gaza City in recent weeks, in an operation described by rights group Amnesty International on Wednesday as “unlawful and inhumane”.

In an Israeli attack early on Thursday, two Palestinians were killed, including an infant, and several others injured after tents sheltering displaced people were hit near Yarmouk Street in Gaza City.

Another Palestinian child was killed after Israeli forces opened fire in the Bureij camp in central Gaza, a source from al-Awda Hospital told Al Jazeera.

Sources from al-Awda and al-Mahmoudiyah hospitals also reported early on Thursday several deaths and injuries following Israeli shelling of Shujayea district east of Gaza City.

Further south, at least four Palestinians waiting for aid were killed in two separate incidents in Rafah, while one person was killed in Israeli shelling northwest of Khan Younis.

Earlier, Palestinian authorities and medical sources reported at least 72 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza within a 24-hour period on Wednesday.

These figures bring the number of people killed in Israeli attacks since the start of the war to at least 64,718, with 163,859 wounded, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

‘Further compounding genocidal conditions’

Israel accelerated its military campaign on Wednesday, with the army attacking dozens of homes in areas of Gaza City in an attempt to push Palestinians out of the area.

The escalation is accompanied by direct and repeated Israeli warnings to leave Gaza City.

In a statement on Wednesday, Amnesty International urged Israel to “immediately rescind” the mass displacement order, calling it “cruel” and “unlawful”, while warning it it “further compounds the genocidal conditions of life” that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians.

“Amnesty International has repeatedly and unequivocally stated that forcibly displacing Palestinians within the Gaza Strip or deporting them violates international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the statement said.

Heba Morayef, a senior Amnesty official for the Middle East, said the Israeli order “is a devastating and inhuman repeat” of the mass displacement order issued for all of North Gaza in October 2023.

Amnesty said some of those who are trying to flee since the order was issued were unable to do so because they cannot afford transport costs, or fit into the small area designated by Israel for evacuation.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said people are making their way from the area to the southern and central areas of the Strip, “but some people are coming back because they are unable to find a place to stay”.

“So as of this moment, there is no safe place in Gaza, including the ‘humanitarian zone’ designated by Israel. The journey itself, from north to south Gaza, has become a matter of life or death.”

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said it will remain in Gaza City, despite the Israeli order.

In a statement published on X by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the UN organisation said it is “appalled” by Israel’s order, saying the evacuation zone “has neither the size nor scale of services” required to support the displaced people.

“This catastrophe is human-made, and the responsibility rests with us all,” the statement said, while calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and for upholding international humanitarian law.

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