Brazil’s justice places an electronic anklet to Bolsonaro in the face of the risk of escape

The Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro dawned this Friday at his home in Brasilia with the most feared visit: that of the Federal Police. The agents came to their home to place an electronic anklet, after the Federal Supreme Court detected a growing risk of escape. The ultra -rightist leader is in the middle of a judicial process for having led an attempted coup against President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and the sentence, which could be known in September, can exceed 40 years in jail.

The police operation arrives a day after the last letter from the president of the United States, Donald Trump, pressing the Brazilian authorities in favor of Bolsonaro, where he came to say that the trial “must end immediately.” With a tension that goes more every day that passes, Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who instructs the process, decided to anticipate the possibility that Bolsonaro asked Trump to asylum and take refuge in the United States embassy, for example, a hypothesis that has long been spoken.

After passing through the police station where the ankle was placed, Bolsonaro said before the press that he is being a victim of a persecution: “The suspicion (of escape) is an exaggeration, I am an former president of the Republic, I am 70 years old. Supreme humiliation,” he complained. He also said he never thought about leaving Brazil or taking refuge in an embassy, although he dropped that he had a meeting with ambassadors next week.

The former president did not want to respond when asked if he would respect the precautionary measures imposed. After the turbulent morning in Brasilia, his son Eduardo hung an English message on social networks explaining the operation and highlighting that neither he nor another of his brothers (councilor Carlos Bolsonaro, investigated by dissemination of hate messages and misinformation on the Internet) can talk to him from now on because they are part of the investigation.

Bolsonaro’s movements were already quite limited since at the beginning of 2024 the police confiscated his passport. Now, with the ankle, he will be guarded 24 hours. You can circulate freely, although with restrictions: at night (from 19 to 7 hours) you will have to be at home. You cannot have contact with foreign ambassadors or get closer to any embassy. Nor can social networks use or maintain contact with one of his children, deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, who from the United States became the architect of the entire pressure strategy via Trump.

Justice believes that there is evidence that Bolsonaro has acted to hinder the trial for coup attempt and has carried out initiatives that could be described as crimes of coercion, obstruction of justice and attack on national sovereignty, which would add 20 years in prison.

In the decision that ordered the precautionary measures, Judge Moraes stressed that the behaviors of Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo are “flagrant confessions of the practice of criminal acts.” In his opinion, the extortion of Bolsonaro to Brazilian institutions is so “shameless” that on Thursday he said publicly that the end of US tariffs are conditioned to their own amnesty. Bolsonaro himself admitted having sent two million reais (more than 360,000 dollars) to his son in the United States, which for researchers constitutes proof that he financed an operation against Brazil’s sovereignty.

The hypothesis of the escape gained strength after a few weeks ago Bolsonarist deputy Carla Zambelli, recently sentenced to ten years in jail, escaped to Italy. Since then, he is in an unknown whereabouts and on the red list of the Interpol. In addition, Bolsonaro had already suggested the idea of taking refuge in an embassy. In February of last year, shortly after losing his passport, he spent two nights at the Hungary Embassy, of the government of another of his Ultras allies, Viktor Orbán.

In the registry to his home on Friday, the police found $ 14,000 and 8,000 reais in cash and a pendrive Hidden in the bathroom, whose content is already being analyzed. There was also a copy of the demand that the American video platform Rumble presented against Moraes. The company accuses the censorship judge and asks that its orders to demolish user accounts of the platform have no legal effect in the United States. The moderation of the content of the ‘Big Techs’ is one of the central points of the contest between the Trump administration and the Brazilian government.