Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, in preventive custody since Saturday, denied on Sunday that he burned his electronic ankle monitor to escape and attributed his behavior to an episode of "paranoia" and "hallucinations" caused by a mix of medications. The far-right leader spent his first night in prison at the headquarters of the Federal Police Superintendency in Brasilia, where he was held after the Supreme Court considered a "concrete risk of escape" and a "threat to public order." The former head of state appeared at a detention control hearing on Monday and received visits from his lawyers, doctors, and his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, who arrived at the police headquarters dressed in black and sunglasses, stayed for two hours, and left without making a statement. The retired army captain, sentenced to 27 years in prison for sedition, was briefly seen at the entrance to the superintendency to say goodbye to his wife, although at no point did he leave the building, EFE witnessed. During the control hearing, he was questioned by an auxiliary judge of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the presiding judge in the sedition case and who ordered his preventive detention on Saturday morning. One of the reasons for the arrest order was the fact that the former head of state (2019-2022) confessed to burning the electronic ankle monitor imposed by the Supreme Court to control his movements with a soldering iron. Bolsonaro, who before his arrest was under house arrest since August, attributed his actions to the side effects of mixing pregabalin (antiepileptic) and sertraline (antidepressant), according to the hearing report. The 70-year-old former leader has long-standing health problems, such as anxiety crises, hiccups, and vomiting, which he attributes to the serious stab wound he suffered during the 2018 electoral campaign and which has forced him to undergo several surgeries. "Paranoia" from mixing medications Bolsonaro also told the judge that he was not sleeping well and was "hallucinating" and in a state of "certain paranoia" because he believed there was a listening system inside the ankle monitor. He recounted that he began manipulating the device on Friday afternoon until midnight on Saturday, when the device alerted Brazilian authorities. However, he denied that he tried to remove it to escape, as the investigating judge maintains, and rejected the theory that he was going to take advantage of a vigil called by one of his sons near his home to flee. Faced with this situation, a team of doctors evaluated him and confirmed that he is "stable," although they suspended the prescription of one of the medications, which they suspect could have caused this supposed mental confusion. Defense asks to return to house arrest His lawyers used this argument to again request the Supreme Court to grant him a "humanitarian" house arrest. In their petition, they explained that Bolsonaro tried to break the ankle monitor due to the use of medication for his hiccups, due to "the stress" he is under, and due to his "advanced age." They also emphasized the impossibility of any escape attempt, as his client's residence was "under uninterrupted surveillance" by the police. The Supreme Court's First Chamber will begin analyzing the arrest order issued individually by de Moraes as of this Monday, although with little room for surprises. Several legal experts have stated that Bolsonaro's arrest is justified. In any case, his detention came just before the Supreme Court is set to order the execution of the 27-year prison sentence he received for "leading" a sedition conspiracy to stay in power after losing the 2022 elections to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Furthermore, this is not the first time there have been suspicions of a possible escape by Bolsonaro. During the investigations into the sedition plot, a draft asylum request to Argentina was found on one of the former president's cell phones, and in 2024, he even spent two days at the Hungarian Embassy in Brasilia. Recently, another person convicted of sedition has fled: Congressman and former Intelligence Directorate director Alexandre Ramagem, who fled clandestinely from the border state of Roraima, Venezuela, and headed to the United States.
