Bolsonaro damages ankle bracelet – and has to go to prison

Photos show damage

Bolsonaro works on the ankle bracelet with a soldering iron – and is imprisoned

Out of curiosity, the former president of Brazil claims to have tampered with his electronic ankle bracelet. However, officers suspect an attempt to escape and arrest him.

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro says he damaged his electronic ankle bracelet with a soldering iron the night before his arrest. “I held a hot iron on it. Out of curiosity,” Bolsonaro told an officer checking the device, as can be seen in a video released by the Supreme Court. When asked whether it was an iron, Bolsonaro replied: “No, a soldering iron.” He insisted that he did not want to take off the ankle bracelet that he had to wear during his house arrest.

The video shows that the plastic casing of the radio, which is estimated to be around ten centimeters in size, is scorched all around Bolsonaro’s ankle. According to the official, the actual device remained “apparently intact.”

Bolsonaro has been under house arrest since August for violating court orders. He was arrested early Saturday morning (local time) on suspicion of a “specific flight risk” and a “threat to public order”. This was not the execution of the sentence for an attempted coup, for which he was sentenced to over 27 years in prison in September. The judgment is not yet final and enforcement was last expected next week.

According to investigators, the decision to arrest was based on new findings from the federal police. Shortly after midnight, the ankle bracelet triggered an alarm, which indicated an attempt at manipulation. In addition, the ex-president’s son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, had previously called for a nightly vigil in front of his father’s house.

According to federal judge Alexandre de Moraes, a tumultuous course of this “vigil” could have made control of the house arrest more difficult and enabled Bolsonaro to escape under the cover of chaos; possibly to the nearby embassy of a country that was friendly to him, such as the USA, where he could then have barricaded himself from the prosecutors. Moraes then decided to take Bolsonaro into custody as a preventative measure.

The government of US President Donald Trump supports the right-wing conservative ex-military Bolsonaro, who has still not accepted his 2022 election defeat. According to the Supreme Court’s conviction, he planned a coup with military and political allies against the government of his left-wing successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Washington accuses the Brazilian judiciary of a politically motivated campaign against Bolsonaro.