Lawyers for former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced last September to 27 years in prison in a historic trial on charges of leading a coup attempt after losing the election, asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow him to serve his sentence “in humane house arrest” because transferring him to prison “would have serious consequences and pose a threat to his life.” The defense cites various health problems as arguments. That is, the former president intends to continue the same system in which he has lived since August, at his home in Brasilia, with his family with an electronic anklet and under police surveillance. The investigating judge in the case, Alexandre de Moraes, ordered this detention to neutralize any risk of escape.
What escaped was one of his colleagues on the bench, Brazilian MP Alexandre Ramajem, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison with Bolsonaro for being part of the central core of Bolsonaro’s coup plot. Ramajim is in a similar position to that of the former president, facing a last resort before the ruling becomes final and he must begin abiding by it.
While press speculation continues about whether Bolsonaro will go to prison and, if so, to which prison (maximum security, army, police station…), released on Wednesday exclusively from the digital media PlatôBR: Ramagem was installed in a luxury residential project in Miami, in the United States, where he was photographed with his wife. On Friday, two days after the revelations, a judge ordered his arrest. He is Bolsonaro’s fourth deputy to be investigated or convicted of fleeing abroad. Dozens of ordinary Bolsonaro supporters have fled, some seeking asylum in Argentina. Bolsonaro even considered asking Miley for help and following this path.
Ramajim, whom Bolsonaro appointed in charge of espionage as director of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN), is a police commissioner by profession, like his wife. The Supreme Court confirmed that the convicted coup plotter is banned from leaving Brazil and has ordered him to surrender his passport. In addition to the regular passport, he held a diplomatic passport in his capacity as a member of parliament, according to the Brazilian press. Information about his escape indicates that he traveled from Rio de Janeiro to Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima, a state bordering Venezuela and Guyana where the couple worked as police officers. According to the same source, the convict crossed the border by land, with unknown documents, and from there moved to Miami.
There is suspicion that the convicted coup plotter Ramajim, in order to mislead, submitted some medical certificates to Congress, allowing him to participate in parliamentary votes, even after the escape was completed. Judge Moraes, who confiscated Bolsonaro’s passport at the beginning of the investigations, will decide, in his capacity as investigator of the case, whether the president will remain at home due to his health problems or whether he is eligible to enter a correctional center.
This escape was preceded by the escape of Bolsonaro’s deputy, who fled to Italy after being sentenced to 10 years in prison (Brasilia requested her extradition), the escape of another parliamentarian who was investigated and who decided to return to his country by chance, and the escape of Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s son, who after settling in the United States to do so. lobby In favor of his father, he was accused of coercing the court that convicted his father, a fugitive police officer and several generals, the first to be convicted of a coup in history.
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