The former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro He explained this Sunday, in a detention control hearing, that, due to the intake of certain medicationsentered a state of “paranoia” y “hallucinations” which led him to burn his electronic anklet with a welder because he believed there was a listening system. The far-right leader submitted by videoconference to questions from an assistant judge about the conditions of his arrest, after spending his first night in preventive detention at the headquarters of the Federal Police, in Brasilia.
The detention control session is a crucial procedure to verify the physical integrity of the detainee and check whether their fundamental rights were violated. The assistant judge of the Supreme Court magistrate Alexandre de Moraes, rapporteur of the process by which Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for coup plotting, led the session and confirmed the absence of “abuses or irregularities,” according to the official report.
The leader of Liberal Party (PL)who had been under house arrest since last August 4 at his residence in Brasilia, was preventively arrested on Saturday morning for “a concrete risk of flight” and “threat to public order.” One of the reasons for the prison order was the fact that the former head of state (2019-2022) confessed having burned the electronic anklet with a soldering iron imposed by the high court to control their movements.
At this Sunday’s hearing, the retired Army captain 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 drugs mentioned are pregabalin (antiepileptic) and sertraline (antidepressant).
Bolsonaro, 70, also claimed that he does not sleep well and that he was “delusional” because He believed that there was a listening system inside the anklet. He reported that he began manipulating the device from Friday afternoon until midnight Saturday, when the device sent an alert to the Brazilian authorities, who immediately came to verify what happened. The former president He also denied that he was trying to remove the anklet to escape.as the investigating judge maintains.
After going through the control hearing, the ultra leader will receive a visit from his wife this Sunday, Michelle Bolsonaro. His arrest occurred on the eve of the Supreme Court ordering the execution of the 27-year prison sentence he received for “leading” a coup plot to “perpetuate himself in power”, after losing the 2022 elections against the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
