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On his first full day in jail, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro told a judge on Sunday he had violated his ankle monitoring the day before while under house arrest because of a nervous breakdown and hallucinations caused by a change in his medication.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the 70-year-old former leader’s pre-emptive jailing on Saturday because he’s considered a flight risk. Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison in September for attempting a coup to remain in the presidency after his 2022 electoral defeat.
“[Bolsonaro] said he had ‘hallucinations’ that there was some wiretap in the ankle monitoring, so he tried to uncover it,” assistant judge Luciana Sorrentino said, as reported in a Supreme Court document published on Sunday, shortly after her online meeting with the former president.
Sorrentino added that Bolsonaro told her he “did not remember having a breakdown of this magnitude in another occasion” and speculated it might have been caused by a change in his medication last week. He once again denied that he intended to escape.
The document also says Bolsonaro also told the judge he hadn’t been sleeping well and was feeling “a certain paranoia” that stimulated his curiosity into opening the ankle-monitoring device.
“[Bolsonaro] said he was with his daughter, his elder brother and an aide at his house and none of them saw what he was doing to the ankle monitoring,” the document says. “He said he started to touch it late at night and stopped around midnight.”
De Moraes received information that the far-right leader’s ankle monitor was violated at 12:08 a.m. on Saturday. The arrest order came hours later.
A panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled in September that Bolsonaro tried to stage a coup and keep the presidency after his defeat by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, in 2022.
On Monday, the same panel will vote on the pre-emptive arrest order.
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced yesterday to 27 years and three months in prison, hours after being convicted of plotting a coup to remain in power after losing the 2022 election. The Associated Press’s Mauricio Savarese breaks down the case and the reaction from the public following his conviction.
Bolsonaro’s meeting with an assistant judge on Sunday was procedural to discuss the legality of his jailing, but it also provided another opportunity for his lawyers to argue he should remain under house arrest due to poor health. The judge has previously rejected similar requests.
De Moraes authorized Bolsonaro to be visited by former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, who was out of Brasilia when federal police agents took her husband into custody.
Lula made his first comments about his predecessor’s jailing at the G20 group of nations meeting in South Africa this week. “The court ruled, that’s decided. Everyone knows what he did,” he told reporters.
Outside the federal police headquarters, some pro-Bolsonaro protesters held banners calling for Lula and de Moraes to be removed from their posts, while detractors of the former president celebrated his jailing.
