On Saturday, Brazilian Federal Police detained former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted of a coup attempt and was already under house arrest, according to local media.
A group of agents went to Bolsonaro’s residence in Brasilia and arrested the far-right leader, who was immediately transferred to police stations. The Brazilian Federal Police stated in a brief note that “on Saturday, in Brasilia, they executed a preventive detention order in accordance with the decision of the Supreme Court,” without specifying who was targeting him. According to the Globo Group, the Brazilian Supreme Court issued a decision to preventive detention of the former president “to ensure public order.”
Last September, the Federal Supreme Court sentenced Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years and three months in prison on charges of attempted coup. This is the first time in the country’s history that a former president faces prison time on charges of attacking democracy after losing the elections in 2022.
The judge then convicted Bolsonaro and the rest of the defendants of the attempted coup against Lula da Silva and the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, the two strongest charges, as well as the formation of an armed criminal organization and two charges of damage and deterioration of state assets.
On the same Friday, Bolsonaro’s defense asked Brazil’s Supreme Court that the former president be able to serve his sentence under house arrest for health reasons. The far-right leader had already been under house arrest at his residence in Brasilia since August 4 for not complying with a series of precautionary measures within the framework of the case.
According to local media, the pretrial detention, on Saturday, is not related to the start of the execution of the ruling, which is expected in the coming weeks, after the Supreme Court rejected the first appeals against the ruling.
As part of the coup operation, the Supreme Court also ordered, on Friday, the pretrial detention of Representative Alexandre Ramajim, an ally of Bolsonaro who was also convicted in the same trial as the former president, after he supposedly fled to the United States.
Investigations indicate that the parliamentarian left Brazil last September through the state of Roraima, which borders Venezuela, and secretly proceeded to that country or to French Guiana, before heading to the United States.
Ramajim, former director of Brazil’s intelligence agency, was sentenced to 16 years in a closed prison on charges of criminal organization, a coup, and the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law.
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