Former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) liked the transfer of the headquarters of the Regional Superintendency of the Federal Police to the Papudinha prison, also in Brasília, and sees the decision as a “good gesture”.
The assessment is reported by allies of the former president who met with his wife, former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, after the transfer, on the same night.
The transfer order was given by the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes on the afternoon of Thursday, 15th. Papudinha is the popular name of the 19th Military Police Battalion of the Federal District, which is part of the Papuda Complex and where police officers and politically exposed people are detained.
Close allies of the family say they “started the year well”, and that the objective is to send the former president to house arrest, in his home in a condominium in Brasília, but that there is a gain in quality of life in Papudinha’s cell.
Those around Bolsonaro are now placing their hopes on the expertise of a Federal Police medical board to analyze the former president’s health situation. The examination must be carried out before Moraes analyzes a new request for humanitarian house arrest, according to a decision signed on Thursday by the minister.
The expertise may facilitate possible accommodation adaptations in the General Staff room in Papudinha or the need for transfer to a penitentiary hospital.
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The defense requested that Moraes grant humanitarian house arrest to Bolsonaro and carry out a new “independent medical assessment, as a matter of urgency, in order to assess the compatibility of the petitioner’s current clinical state with the prison environment”.
Bolsonaro’s transfer has been treated with relief by allies in private conversations, but criticized in public. Estadão spoke to people close to the former president to gauge their feelings about Moraes’ decision.
The general assessment is that the change of cell will bring a gain in Bolsonaro’s quality of life, but it cannot be celebrated in public, at the risk of cooling the campaign for house arrest.
For an ally, the conditions in Papudinha’s cell improve his “minimum condition” of well-being. For another, she is “absurdly better, but she can’t celebrate yet because it’s all still bullshit.”
One of them stated that the transfer ends up reducing pressure on activists and the political class for the house arrest campaign, which could perpetuate Bolsonaro’s incarceration. Another sees in Moraes’ decision “a background of concern about doing something stupid, imagine if the president dies” (in jail).
Various leaders criticized Moraes’ decision. The PL leader in the Chamber of Deputies, Sóstenes Cavalcante (RJ), stated on social media that the country is under “a regime of judicial discretion”.
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“What we see is not justice. It is authoritarianism in a robe, abuse of institutionalized power, the pen used as a baton. The transfer of a former president to a penitentiary, by an isolated decision, is political punishment, revenge disguised as legality and a demonstration of strength by those who no longer recognize limits”, he published.
Former councilor Carlos Bolsonaro (PL-SC) criticized his father’s transfer and said that Papudinha represents a “severe prison environment”.
“The transfer to a severe prison environment, added to the legal aberrations highlighted and the delicate clinical condition, comes to represent more than compliance with a judicial decision: it becomes a symbolic landmark of institutional confrontation, whose impact goes beyond the figure of Jair Bolsonaro and reaches the very concept of justice, proportionality and the Rule of Law in Brazil”, he wrote on a social network.
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Michelle, on the other hand, thanked the PF for the care and assistance provided to her husband during the last weeks of custody. The transfer is the result of an articulation of which the former first lady was part.
In the decision that determined the transfer, Moraes mentions the existence of a “fraudulent campaign” against the Judiciary and complaints from Bolsonaro’s family about the conditions of leaving him in the PF cell.
The decision cites a series of statements from Bolsonaro’s family members made to denounce the situation he found himself in after being arrested in November, despite the former president living with what Moraes calls “privileges” in prison.
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The minister lists the benefits of the General Staff Room, such as the square footage, room with private bathroom and hot water, TV, air conditioning, minibar, PF doctor on duty 24 hours a day, authorization for physiotherapy, daily and exclusive sunbathing, medical examinations and special protocol for daily delivery of homemade food.
