Jair Bolsonaro’s former advisor has been under house arrest since the end of December. He is one of those convicted of attempted coup d’état in the trial for the January 8, 2023 attacks in Brasilia.
Jair Bolsonaro’s former advisor, Filipe Martins, was arrested by the federal police this Friday morning (2/1) in Paraná, after the Minister of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes considered that he had not respected a precautionary measure that prohibited him from using social networks.
Martins, who was special advisor for international affairs to the Presidency of the Republic during the Bolsonaro administration, was sentenced in December to 21 years in prison for attempted coup d’état in the trial of the January 8, 2023 attacks in Brasilia.
The action has not yet been finalized, which would mark the start of the sentence. However, since December 27, Martins and others convicted in the case have been under house arrest. This was also determined by Moraes, after the unsuccessful escape attempt of the former director of the Federal Highway Police, Silvinei Vasques.
The measure provided for a series of conditions which, if violated, could lead to conversion to preventive detention. In the decision that authorized the arrest this Friday, Moraes considered that one of the precautionary measures had been violated due to access to the LinkedIn network.
“On 12/29/2025, the news was added to the file that the convicted defendant had used the social network LinkedIn to search for third party profiles,” the text states, without giving further details about what happened.
The decision goes on to state that on the same date, the minister ordered that Martins’ lawyers be summoned to provide clarification on the matter.
The response given by the defense on December 31, according to the text, was that the access would have been carried out by the lawyers themselves, who would be responsible for “the exclusive custody and management” of Martins’ accounts and profiles.
“Such technical management is carried out in a silent, non-communicative manner and devoid of any externalization of will or expression of thought, so that there is no publication, interaction, exchange of messages or any other form of communicative action on digital platforms,” declared the defense, in an extract reproduced in the decision.
“The defendant does not have access credentials and has not performed any acts on these platforms since the period before the current precautionary restrictions were imposed,” the statement continued.
The lawyers clarified that Martins would not have used his social networks himself and that, therefore, he would not have failed to respect the precautionary measure.
They argued that the ban would concern “exclusively the active, voluntary and intentional communicative use of digital platforms” and that, therefore, it would not cover “technical, diligent and passive access for defense purposes, nor automated events on digital platforms, algorithmic recordings, statistical inferences or any events devoid of communicative content, intent or proven authorship”.
Moraes asserts, however, that “in reality, there is no doubt about the non-compliance with the precautionary measure imposed, since the defense itself recognizes the use of the social network, without any relevance to the defensive allegation in the sense that social networks were used to ‘preserve, organize and verify elements of past information relevant to the exercise of a defense in the broad sense'”.
And he continues: “The accused shows a total lack of respect for the imposed norms and constitutionally democratic institutions, because, by using social networks, he violates the precautionary measures applied, as well as the entire judicial system.”
In a statement sent to the report, one of Martins’ attorneys, Jeffrey Chiquini, complained about Moraes’ decision, saying there were plans to move up the sentence, although an appeal was still possible.
“It is not a precautionary measure, it is a measure of revenge,” he said in a video also shared on his social networks, affirming that “today the STF is putting into practice what it wants since 2019, when Felipe Martins was chosen as head of the hate cabinet.”
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