Journalism of Courage
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro told a judge on Sunday that he violated his electronic ankle monitoring during his house arrest due to medicine-induced “paranoia” and “hallucination”, a day after he was transferred from house arrest to detention as police took his custody fearing he might flee, Reuters reported.
On Saturday, Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the arrest of the 70-year-old former president of the country as the administration said Bolsonaro is a potential flight risk. Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years of jail in September on charges of attempting a coup after getting defeated in the 2022 presidential election in order to remain in the presidency.
Bolsonaro, who was detained after more than 100 days of house arrest, awaits the final appeal of his prison sentence on charges of plotting a coup.
During the 30-minute hearing on Sunday, Bolsonaro defended his actions and told the court that he had no intentions to flee the country and he wasn’t trying to remove the ankle monitor. The former president blamed his actions on the mix of anticonvulsant drugs prescribed by different doctors.
Though Bolsonaro admitted to trying to open the ankle monitor with a soldering iron during the hearing in Brasilia, he blamed it on the drugs prescribed to him for the chronic hiccups which allegedly led him to imagine that there was listening equipment inside the tracking device. Bolsonaro said he kept trying to open the monitor on Friday until he “came to his senses”, court documents showed.
“(Bolsonaro) said he had ‘hallucinations’ that there was some wire tap in the ankle monitoring, so he tried to uncover it,” assistant judge Luciana Sorrentino said. Bolsonaro also told her he “did not remember having a breakdown of this magnitude in another occasion,” and speculated that it might have happened due to a change in his medicines a few days ago, Sorrentino added.
(with inputs from agencies)
