Early this Saturday morning, Jair Bolsonaro was preventively detained and taken to the federal police headquarters in Brasília. The former President of Brazil has already been subject to a corpus delicti examination at the National Institute of Criminalistics of the Federal Police. The detention, however, does not relate to serving the sentence of 27 years and three monthsto which Bolsonaro was sentenced for attempted coup d’état, as there is still an appeal to the former President. Preventive detention was justified by the need to guarantee public order and with a attempt to break the electronic bracelet worn during his house arrestregarding a conviction for coercion.
The judge of the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court, Alexandre de Moraes asked that the former President be taken away by the police without the use of handcuffs and without media exposure. In the decision, Moraes advocates that the arrest warrant should be carried out “with all due respect to the dignity of the former President of the Republic”.
After the arrest, former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro published a religious message on her Instagram: “I will lift my eyes before the hill from which my help comes. I trust in the Lord.”
What are the legal grounds that allow this preventive detention?
The request for detention was made by the Federal Police, and authorized by judge Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF (Supreme Federal Court). Moraes justified that public order must be complied with, at a time when he was preparing a vigil at Jair Bolsonaro’s residenceorganized by one of the sons of the former Brazilian President, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. The request is not just justified by the fear of the crowd that could form.
On social media, the senator and son of Jair Bolsonaro addressed a bellicose speech to the masses: “Are you going to fight for your country or watch everything on your cell phone? [telemóvel] on the couch at home? I invite you to fight with us. In this first moment, we will seek the Lord [aponta para o céu] of the Army.”