Jair Bolsonaro says
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — On his first full day in prison, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro told a judge Sunday that he had violated monitoring of his ankle the day before during his house arrest due to a nervous breakdown and hallucinations caused by a change in his medication.
Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes on Saturday ordered the preventive imprisonment of the 70-year-old leader because he was considered a flight risk. Bolsonaro was sentenced in September to 27 years in prison for attempting a coup to remain in office after his 2022 electoral defeat.
“(Bolsonaro) said he had ‘hallucinations’ that there was an eavesdropping on the ankle monitor, so he tried to find out,” Associate Justice Luciana Sorrentino said, as reported in a Supreme Court document released Sunday shortly after her online meeting with the former president.
Sorrentino added that Bolsonaro told him he “didn’t remember having a breakdown of this magnitude on another occasion” and speculated that it might have been caused by a change in his medication last week. Once again he denied that he had any intention of escaping.
AP Photo/Eraldo Pérez
The document says Bolsonaro also told the judge that he had not slept well and that he felt “a certain paranoia” that stimulated his curiosity to open the ankle monitoring device.
“(Bolsonaro) said he was with his daughter, his older brother and an assistant at his house and none of them saw what he was doing to the ankle monitor,” the document says. “He said he started playing it late at night and stopped playing it around midnight.”
De Moraes received information that the far-right leader’s ankle monitor was breached at 12:08 a.m. on Saturday. The arrest warrant arrived hours later.
Two of Bolsonaro’s doctors who came to his support on Sunday morning later said in a statement that they had suspended the use of a medication that was reportedly worrying the former president. They also said that he is physically well.
A panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled in September that Bolsonaro attempted to stage a coup and retain the presidency after his loss to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022.
On Monday, the same panel will vote on the pretrial detention order.
Bolsonaro’s meeting with an assistant judge on Sunday was procedural to discuss the legality of his imprisonment, but also provided another opportunity for his lawyers to argue that he should remain under house arrest due to his poor health. De Moraes had already rejected similar requests.
De Moraes authorized Bolsonaro to be visited by former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, who was outside Brasilia when federal police agents detained her husband. He did not speak to reporters after his two-hour visit.
Lula made his first comments about his predecessor’s imprisonment at the G20 meeting in South Africa. “The court ruled, that’s decided. Everyone knows what he did,” Lula told reporters.
Outside the federal police headquarters, some pro-Bolsonaro protesters held banners calling for the removal of Lula and Moraes from their positions, while the former president’s detractors celebrated his imprisonment.
AP Photo/Eraldo Pérez
Other Brazilian cities recorded anti-Bolsonaro demonstrations. A giant plastic doll of the former president dressed as a prisoner paraded along the main artery of Sao Paulo for several hours. The Rio de Janeiro Pride parade also rejoiced at the preventive imprisonment of the far-right leader.