BRASILIA, Brazil
Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro, sentenced over a botched coup bid and under house arrest since August, was taken into custody on Saturday, according to his lawyer and a court document.
The far-right firebrand was sentenced in September to 27 years
in prison over a plot to stop leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office in
2022 following Bolsonaro's election defeat.
The Supreme Court judge leading the trial against Bolsonaro,
Alexandre de Moraes, concluded Bolsonaro was a "high flight risk" and
ordered pre-trial detention, according to the ruling seen by AFP.
The ruling says Bolsonaro planned to break his ankle monitor
during a rally planned for later on Saturday, called by his son outside the
politician's home in Brasilia.
Sources close to the case earlier said the former leader had
been taken into custody as a precaution and not to begin serving his sentence.
Celso Vilardi, one of Bolsonaro's lawyers, told AFP that
"he has been imprisoned, but I don't know why."
A police statement that did not mention the former president by
name said officers had "executed a preventive arrest request in compliance
with a Supreme Court decision."
Bolsonaro, who governed Brazil from 2019 to 2022, was placed
under house arrest in August for violating measures imposed on him.
He has been confined to an upscale condominium in the capital
Brasilia, and monitored electronically.
An appeal of his sentence was rejected last week,
bringing him one step closer to serving his prison term.
Bolsonaro's lawyers have said they would file further appeals
before a Monday deadline, but sought to get ahead of plans to put Bolsonaro in
jail by requesting he be allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest.
They had previously argued that Bolsonaro's medical needs were
"absolutely incompatible with a common prison environment."
Bolsonaro was convicted in September of leading a criminal
organization that conspired to ensure his "authoritarian hold on
power."
The plot involved a plan to assassinate Lula, his vice president
Geraldo Alckmin, and the Supreme Court judge de Moraes.
Sending Bolsonaro to prison "will have serious consequences
and represents a risk to his life," his lawyers said in a petition to the
Supreme Court.
They added Bolsonaro's "health condition is already deeply
debilitated."
Bolsonaro, 70, suffers ongoing consequences of a stab wound to
the abdomen received during a knife attack on the campaign trail in 2018.
His lawyers said that since he was placed under house arrest,
Bolsonaro "has already been hospitalized three times – twice for tests and
once due to a medical emergency."
They added he required continuous treatment for pulmonary
infections, esophagitis and gastritis, and has skin cancer and suffered from
sleep apnea that required him to sleep with a CPAP machine.
In September, Bolsonaro's doctor said his skin cancer lesions
had been removed and that he required no further treatment at that stage.
He also suffered from persistent "uncontrollable
hiccups" which require daily medication and have caused shortness of
breath and fainting, according to the petition.
US President Donald Trump, who was friendly
with Bolsonaro when they were both in office, has called the cases against him a
"witch hunt".
He imposed sanctions on
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, and a 50
percent tariff on US imports of several Brazilian goods, which he began to roll back this
month.
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