Patrons of a bar in Brasilia cheered and applauded Thursday as ex-president Jair Bolsonaro’s guilty verdict appeared on a giant screen in scenes reminiscent of a football match.

“Bolsonaro to jail!” shouted customers of Pardim, well-known as a gathering spot for leftists in a residential neighborhood of the capital of deeply politically divided Brazil.

“I burst into tears. This is a very important moment for which we’ve been waiting a long time,” Sofia Araujo, a 20-year-old student, told AFP on the bar’s terrace.

“I am very happy. Today we can celebrate because justice has been served,” she said.

Araujo told AFP she had also gone to Pardim in October 2022 to celebrate the election victory of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, from whom Bolsonaro was found guilty Thursday of t

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