Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro stated this Sunday that, due to taking medications, he entered a state of “paranoia” and “hallucinations”, which led him to burn the electronic bracelet with a welder, because he believed there was a listening system.
Bolsonaro responded via videoconference to questions from an assistant judge as part of his detention, after spending his first night in preventive detention at the Federal Police headquarters, in Brasília.
The detention control hearing is a procedure considered crucial to verify the physical integrity of the detainee and verify whether their fundamental rights have been violated.
The assistant judge of Supreme Court magistrate Alexandre de Moraes, rapporteur of the process for which Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison, led the session and found the absence of “abuses or irregularities”, according to the official report.
The leader of the Liberal Party (PL), who had been under house arrest since August 4th at his residence in Brasília, was preventively arrested on Saturday morning for a “concrete risk of escape” and “threat to public order”.
One of the reasons for the arrest order was the fact that the former head of state (2019-2022) confessed to having burned the electronic bracelet imposed by the high court to control his movements with a welder.
At this Sunday’s hearing, Bolsonaro declared that he entered a state of “certain paranoia” between Friday and Saturday, as a result of taking medications prescribed by different doctors, which caused adverse reactions.
The two medications mentioned are pregabalin (antiepileptic) and sertraline (antidepressant).
Bolsonaro, 70 years old, also claimed that he doesn’t sleep well and that he was “hallucinating”, because he believed that there was a listening system inside the bracelet.
The former president reported that he began manipulating the device from Friday afternoon until midnight on Saturday, when the device issued an alert to the Brazilian authorities, who immediately arrived to check what had happened.
Jair Bolsonaro denied that he tried to take off his bracelet to escape, as stated by the investigating judge.
After passing the control hearing, the ultranationalist leader will receive a visit from his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro.
The arrest occurred before the Supreme Court ordered the execution of the 27-year prison sentence he was sentenced to for “leading” a coup plot to “perpetuate himself in power”, after losing the 2022 elections to the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.