The supreme court of Brazil voted this Monday to maintain the imprisonment of the former president Jair Bolsonarotransferred to prison on Saturday after damaging the electronic anklet that controlled his house arrest.
Confirmation of Bolsonaro’s imprisonment will be official at 20:00 localeswhen the court session in which the case is deliberated ends.
Bolsonaro was sentenced in September to 27 years in prison for an attempted coup against the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after losing the 2022 elections.
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The far-right, 70 years old, had been under preventive house arrest since August at his home in Brasilia waiting to exhaust the appeals against the sentence. The deadline to appeal ends this Monday.
Bolsonaro “intentionally and consciously violated the electronic monitoring equipment,” the magistrate argued this Monday Alexandre de Moraeswho ordered his transfer to prison, according to a document released during the extraordinary virtual session.
The other three judges of the first chamber of the supreme court ratified Moraes’ decision.
Decision responds to serious indications of possible escape
The judge reiterated on Monday that his decision responded to the “very serious indications of a possible escape attempt“, according to him, scheduled for Saturday afternoon during a demonstration called by the former president’s son in front of his residence.
The judge also recalled that the United States Embassy is located near the neighborhood, and that Bolsonaro is an ally of President Donald Trump.
Early Saturday morning, the prison surveillance system detected damage to the anklet.
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A video of the inspection shows Bolsonaro admitting to an official that used “a soldering iron” to try to open the device out of “curiosity”.
During a custody hearing on Sunday, Bolsonaro alleged that he suffered a moment of “paranoia” due to medication and that had “hallucinations” that there were listening devices in the anklet.
His lawyers requested that he return to house arrest for his “mental confusion picture”arguing that he suffered side effects from drugs he takes to relieve hiccups resulting from the aftermath of a stab wound he received in 2018.