Brazil’s former president, convicted of a foiled coup, is beneath arrest after taking a soldering iron to the monitoring machine.
Printed On 23 Nov 2025
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has instructed a decide that “hallucinations” provoked by a change in his treatment led him to tamper along with his angle tag whereas beneath home arrest for an attempted coup.
In a custody listening to on Sunday following his detention yesterday over the incident, the far-right former chief instructed a Supreme Court docket decide that he skilled a medicine-induced “paranoia” that led him to take a soldering iron to the machine.
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“[Bolsonaro] mentioned he had ‘hallucinations’ that there was some wiretap within the ankle monitoring, so he tried to uncover it,” mentioned Assistant Choose Luciana Sorrentino in a courtroom doc revealed shortly after the net listening to with the previous president.
Bolsonaro was beneath home arrest whereas appealing his conviction for a botched army coup after his 2022 election loss, however had been taken into custody on Saturday after police experiences he had tried to violate the ankle tag rendered him a possible flight threat.
Supreme Court docket Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the arrest hours after receiving data at 12:08am [03:08 GMT] on Saturday that the tag had been violated.
Bolsonaro denied he was making an attempt to flee, telling Sorrentino that a mixture of medicines prescribed by totally different medical doctors had led to the episode. He mentioned he started taking one among them solely 4 days earlier than his detention on Saturday morning.
“The witness said that, round midnight, he tampered with the ankle bracelet, then ‘got here to his senses’ and stopped utilizing the soldering iron, at which level he knowledgeable the officers answerable for his custody,” the courtroom doc mentioned.
Sunday’s assembly was procedural in nature, however supplied a possibility for Bolsonaro’s attorneys to argue that the previous president ought to stay beneath home arrest as a consequence of poor well being. De Moraes has beforehand rejected related requests.
A panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court docket dominated in September that Bolsonaro tried to stage a coup and maintain the presidency after his defeat by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2022, sentencing him to 27 years and three months in jail.
On Monday, the identical panel will vote on the pre-emptive arrest order.
President Lula made his first feedback about his predecessor’s jailing at a gathering of the Group of 20 (G20) bloc of countries in South Africa. “The courtroom dominated, that’s determined. Everybody is aware of what he did,” Lula instructed journalists.
