Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted Wednesday to approve a bill that could significantly reduce former President Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence.

If the Senate also agrees to the bill, his 27-year sentence could be reduced to just over two years.

The decision comes less than a month after Bolsonaro started serving his 27-year sentence for trying and failing to start an uprising against his successor, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, after losing the 2022 election.

Brazil’s ex-president Bolsonaro taken into custody

Lawyers say Bolsonaro needs ‘surgical procedures’

Separately, Bolsonaro’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to authorize his release so he can undergo "surgical procedures."

They said the 70-year-old needs “immediate hospitalization.”

They also urged the court to allow the ex-president to serve his sentence at home for "humanitarian" reasons.

He is currently being held at a federal prison in Brasilia, the capital.

Ruckus in Brazil Congress

There was chaos in Brazil’s Congress as the lower house discussed the bill that could reduce Bolsonaro’s prison sentence.

Congressman Glauber Braga was removed from the chamber by policement for disrupting the sessionImage: Julia Maretto/AFP

Lula-allied leftist lawmaker Glauber Braga disrupted Congress and was forcibly removed by police officers after he denounced a "coup offensive" and occupied the speaker’s chair, according to footage broadcast on local television.

The broadcast was interrupted and the debate was suspended, but the session resumed after order was restored.

Braga said he was exercising his right "not to accept as a done deal an amnesty for a group of coup plotters."

The bill would not only greatly lower sentences for several crimes, including trying to overthrow the government, but also let about 100 Bolsonaro supporters out on parole who were jailed for the January 8, 2023, attack on government buildings in Brasilia.

Edited by: Louis Oelofse