The former president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) explained this Sunday the reasons that led him to manipulate, early Saturday morning, the electronic anklet that monitors his movements, an incident that raised suspicion that he was going to flee and for which the judge ordered the replacement of house arrest at the police headquarters in Brasilia. The far-right said, during the custody hearing held this afternoon, that he tried to break the device because, under the effects of medication, he thought it was hiding a microphone. “The witness stated that he was hallucinating that there was some type of listening device on the ankle monitor and that [por eso] “He tried to open the lid,” says the minutes of the hearing, cited by the Brazilian press.
Bolsonaro has denied in the hearing that he intended to escape, as the judge argues. The prisoner has said that, due to the bad combination of medications prescribed by different doctors, early Saturday morning he suffered “a hallucination”, “a paranoia”, which made him believe that a microphone had been planted on him and that is why he tried to open the device with a soldering pencil.
The people who were with him in the house, his daughter, his older brother and an advisor, did not help him, he stated. In a video recorded while an official inspects the damaged anklet, Bolsonaro says he did it “out of curiosity.”
Bolsonaro has spent his first night in preventive detention after more than , a measure decreed by Judge Moraes in August to prevent him from fleeing before the trial.
President Lula has commented on Bolsonaro’s preventive detention in Johannesburg, where he has . “Justice decided and is decided. Everyone knows what he did,” the president declared to the press, who has insisted, as he systematically does, that Bolsonaro’s right to the presumption of innocence has been respected.
The judge has authorized Michelle Bolsonaro’s visit to her husband. The lawyers have also requested permission for: Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who called the vigil in front of the patriarch’s chalet that set off alarms and who, after his imprisonment, gathered a hundred people; Councilor Carlos, investigated for organizing disinformation campaigns on social networks, and Councilor Jair Renan, accused of money laundering. They do not include deputy Eduardo, accused of coercing the highest court from the United States, where he has taken refuge for months, and Laura, 15 years old, the only one outside of politics.
When decreeing his transfer to Federal Police facilities, the judge mentioned the manipulation of the anklet and a vigil called for this Saturday in front of his house as the main indications that keeping the convicted coup plotter in his house represented a “high risk of escape,” according to Judge Alexandre de Moraes, of the Supreme Court, who is handling the case.
He also mentioned the proximity of the United States Embassy and the recent escape to Miami of another of the main convicts. Last September, the former president and soldier was sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup against his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In a few days, when the last appeal is resolved, he should begin serving his sentence.
