The Supreme Court ordered the former president’s transfer to a federal prison cell, citing a “concrete flight risk” after he admitted to tampering with the device using a soldering iron.
BRASÍLIA — Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was arrested on Saturday and transferred to a federal detention facility after the Supreme Court ruled he had attempted to disable his electronic monitoring bracelet in a bid to flee the country.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has spearheaded the investigations into the far-right leader, ordered the preventive detention citing a “concrete risk of flight” and a “threat to public order.” The decision came hours after the monitoring system alerted authorities to a breach in the device’s circuit at Bolsonaro’s residence in Brasília shortly after midnight.
According to the Federal Police report, Bolsonaro admitted to agents that he had applied a soldering iron to the anklet on Friday evening. While the former president claimed he acted merely “out of curiosity” to inspect the device, the court interpreted the damage as a deliberate preparation for escape.
“The information confirms the convict’s intention to break the electronic anklet to ensure the success of his escape, facilitated by the confusion caused by the demonstration called by his son,” Moraes wrote in the arrest warrant.
The magistrate referred to a “vigil for Bolsonaro’s health” organized by Senator Flávio Bolsonaro outside the residence for Saturday, which investigators believe was intended to create a chaotic screen for the ex-president’s extraction to a foreign embassy or across the border.
Bolsonaro, 70, had been under house arrest since August 4, awaiting the final execution of a 27-year prison sentence handed down in September for his leadership role in the 2023 coup attempt against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Defense attorneys expressed “profound perplexity” at the arrest, arguing that the damage to the anklet was minor and did not interrupt the GPS signal. They requested his return to house arrest due to his fragile health, citing chronic issues stemming from his 2018 stabbing.
However, Bolsonaro was transferred to a special room at the Federal Police headquarters in Brasília. The facility, equipped with basic amenities but isolated, will hold him until a potential transfer to the Papuda penitentiary complex.
The arrest marks a dramatic low for the populist leader, who maintained close ties with international allies like U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump, who reportedly invited Bolsonaro to his own recent inauguration only for the Brazilian to be barred from traveling, criticized the detention as “very bad” on social media.
This latest development accelerates the legal reckoning for the Bolsonarista movement, as authorities tighten the net around the network accused of trying to violently abolish Brazil’s democratic rule of law.
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