A majority of Brazil’s supreme court judges have voted to convict the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a military coup, leaving the far-right populist facing a decades-long sentence for leading the criminal conspiracy.

Justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha ruled on ​Thursday that Bolsonaro – a former paratrooper who was elected president in 2018 – was guilty of seeking to forcibly cling to power after losing the 2022 election, meaning three of the five judges involved in the trial had found Brazil’s former leader guilty. Delivering her decisive vote, Rocha denounced what she called an attempt to “sow the malignant seed of anti-democracy” in Brazil – but celebrated how the country’s institutions had survived and were fighting back.

There were leftwing celebrations outside the supreme court as Rocha sealed the fate of Bolsonaro and seven other close allies who were also convicted. They include the former defence ministers, Netto and Gen Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, the former minister for institutional security, Gen Augusto Heleno, and the former navy commander, Adm Almir Garnier Santos. “Today Brazil is making history,” Lindbergh Farias, the leader of Lula’s Workers’ party in the lower house of congress, said as he emerged from the building. “Brazil is saying: ‘Coups are a crime!’”