The lawyers of former president Jair Bolsonaro, sentenced in September in a historic trial to 27 years for leading a coup attempt after losing the elections, have asked the Supreme Court this Friday to allow him to serve his sentence “in humanitarian house arrest” because his transfer to a prison “would have serious consequences and represents a risk to his life.” The defense cites various health problems as arguments. Hours later, his eldest son and spokesman in recent times, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, has called on Bolsonaro supporters to stop following the news “from the couch over the phone” and to join “a prayer vigil for the health” of the former president at the doors of his house starting Saturday night.
The former president intends to serve his sentence in the same regime in which he has been in preventive detention 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 confinement to neutralize any risk of escape.
The one who has escaped is one of his colleagues on the bench, the Brazilian deputy Alexandre Ramagem, sentenced to 16 years along with Bolsonaro for being part of the central nucleus of the Bolsonaro coup plot. Ramagem is in a situation similar to that of the former president, facing the last resort before the sentence becomes final and he must begin to comply with it.
While journalistic speculation was going on about whether Bolsonaro would go to prison and, if so, to which one (maximum security, military, a police station…), on Wednesday came the exclusive from the digital media PlatôBR: Ramagem is installed in a luxury development in Miami, in the United States, where he was photographed with his wife. This Friday, two days after the revelation, the judge ordered that he be arrested. He is the fourth Bolsonaro deputy investigated or convicted to escape abroad.
Ramagem, whom Bolsonaro placed in charge of espionage as director of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN), is a police commissioner by profession, like his wife. The Supreme Court has confirmed that the convicted coup plotter was prohibited from leaving Brazil and that it had ordered him to hand over his passport. In addition to the ordinary passport, he had a diplomatic one in his capacity as a parliamentarian, according to the Brazilian press. Information about his escape indicates that he traveled from Rio de Janeiro to Boa Vista, capital of Roraima, a state bordering Venezuela and Guyana where the couple worked as police officers. According to the same source, the convicted man crossed the border by land, with what documentation it is unknown, and from there he moved to Miami.
There is a suspicion that, to mislead, the convicted coup plotter Ramagem presented some medical certificates in Congress, which has allowed him to participate in parliamentary votes, even once the escape was completed. Judge Moraes, who confiscated Bolsonaro’s passport at the beginning of the investigations, will decide, as investigator of the case, whether the president remains at home due to his health problems or is fit to be admitted to a penitentiary center.
This escape was preceded by that of a Bolsonaro deputy who fled to Italy after being sentenced to 10 years in prison (Brasilia has requested her extradition), that of another investigated parliamentarian who decided to return to his country by chance and that of Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the president, who after settling in the United States to do lobby in favor of his father, he was accused of coercing the court that convicted his father, the now escaped police officer and several generals, the first in history to be convicted of a coup.
Dozens of ordinary Bolsonaro supporters have fled, some of them requesting asylum in Argentina. Even Bolsonaro considered asking Milei for help and following that path.
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