Brazil’s Supreme Court voted to uphold the imprisonment of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was arrested after an incident involving his ankle monitor.
According to Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, Bolsonaro had “willfully and consciously violated the electronic monitoring equipment,” Le Monde reported. He claimed there had been “very serious indications of a possible attempt to flee.”
Assistant Judge Luciana Sorrentino said in a Supreme Court document, as per The Associated Press, that Bolsonaro argued he had “‘hallucinations’ that there was some wire tap in the ankle monitoring, so he tried to uncover it.” The document noted that Bolsonaro shared that he “did not remember having a breakdown of this magnitude in another occasion.”
“(Bolsonaro) said he was with his daughter, his elder brother and an aide at his house and none of them saw what he was doing to the ankle monitoring,” the document states. “He said he started to touch it late at night and stopped around midnight.”
In September, Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, was charged with coercion. Bolsonaro has “repeatedly sought to subordinate the interests of Brazil and the entire society to his own personal and family agenda,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Bolsonaro, who lives in the United States, called the charges “bogus” in a statement on X.
Prior to the charges, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) placed sanctions on the Lex Instituto de Estudos Juridicos LTDA (Lex Institute) for its support of Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
“Alexandre de Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions, and politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the time. “Today’s action makes clear that Treasury will continue to target individuals who provide material support to de Moraes as he abuses human rights.”
