The Federal Supreme Court (STF) of Brazil already has a majority to maintain the preventive detention of Jair Bolsonaro, detained on Saturday. Judges Flávio Dino and Cristiano Zanin accompanied their colleague Alexandre de Moraes, who had decreed the conversion of house arrest into preventive detention, after the former president had violated the electronic bracelet and his eldest son had organized a vigil. All that remains is to vote for judge Cármen Lúcia.
“There is no doubt about the need to convert house arrest into preventive detention, due to the need to guarantee public order, to ensure the application of criminal law and disregard for previously applied precautionary measures”, said Moraes in the justification. “Jair Messias Bolsonaro is persistent in his failure to comply with the various precautionary measures imposed,” he added.
Dino added that there were “escapes to other countries of federal deputies perpetrating similar and related crimes, using different devices”, he said in relation to the publication of images of Alexandre Ramagem, convicted in the same trial as Bolsonaro, in Florida, in the United States. In another case, Bolsonaro supporter Carla Zambelli also escaped to Italy, via the USA, after conviction.
The judges also highlighted that, even before trying to melt the electronic bracelet due, according to him, to a “hallucination”, Bolsonaro had violated the terms of his house arrest by participating in social networks. On the other hand, the former president even wrote an asylum request to Argentina, chaired by ally Javier Milei, and spent two nights, in February 2024, at the Hungarian embassy, owned by fellow ally Viktor Orban, when rumors of imminent arrest emerged.