POLICE accused Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro and 36 others on Thursday for allegedly attempting a coup to keep the right-wing leader in office after his defeat in the 2022 election. 

Already barred from running again in 2026 for a different case, Mr Bolsonaro could now end up in prison.

Brazil’s federal police said that the sealed findings in Thursday’s indictment were being delivered to Brazil’s Supreme Court, which will refer them to prosecutor-general Paulo Gonet, who will decide on whether to formally charge Mr Bolsonaro and put him on trial.

Mr Gonet is already under pressure from his legal peers to move forward with the various investigations related to the ex-president, local media have reported. 

Mr Bolsonaro told the website Metropoles that he was waiting for his lawyer to review the indictment, reportedly about 700 pages long. But he said that he would fight the case and dismissed the investigation as being the result of “creativity.”

The former president has denied all claims he tried to stay in office after his narrow electoral defeat in 2022 to the country’s left-wing President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva. 

Police said the Supreme Court had agreed to reveal the names of all 37 people who were accused “to avoid the dissemination of incorrect news.”

Dozens of former and current aides of Mr Bolsonaro were accused, including General Walter Braga Netto, who was his running mate in the 2022 campaign, former army commander General Paulo Sergio Nogueira de Oliveira and Valdemar Costa Neto, chairman of Mr Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party.

On Tuesday, Federal Police arrested four military and a Federal Police officer, accused of plotting to assassinate Lula and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and to overthrow the government following the 2022 elections.

And last week, a man failed in an attempt to enter the Supreme Court in the capital Brasilia with bomb-making material. He ended up killing himself outside the building.