The lawyers of former president Jair Bolsonaro, sentenced in September in a historic trial to 27 years for leading a coup attempt after losing the elections, asked the Supreme Court this Friday to allow him to serve his sentence “under humanitarian house arrest” because his transfer to a prison “would have serious consequences and represent a risk to his life”. The defense cites various health problems as arguments. That is, the former president intends to continue in the same regime he has been in since August, in his home in Brasilia, with his family with an electronic anklet and under police surveillance. The investigating judge in the case, Alexandre de Moraes, ordered this confinement to neutralize any risk of escape.
The one who escaped was one of his colleagues on the bench, the Brazilian MP Alexandre Ramagem, sentenced to 16 years together with Bolsonaro for being part of the central nucleus of Bolsonaro’s coup plot. Ramagem finds himself in a similar situation to that of the former president, facing the last resort before the sentence becomes final and he must begin to respect it.
While there was journalistic speculation whether Bolsonaro would go to prison and, if so, in which (maximum security, army, a police station…), the exclusive arrived on Wednesday from the digital media PlatôBR: Ramagem is installed in a luxury complex in Miami, United States, where he was photographed with his wife. This Friday, two days after the revelation, the judge ordered the arrest. He is the fourth Bolsonaro deputy investigated or convicted for fleeing abroad. Dozens of ordinary Bolsonaro supporters have fled, some of them asking for asylum in Argentina. Bolsonaro also thought of asking Milei for help and following that path.
Ramagem, whom Bolsonaro put in charge of espionage as director of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN), is a professional police commissioner, like his wife. The Supreme Court confirmed that the convicted coup plotter had been banned from leaving Brazil and ordered to hand over his passport. In addition to his ordinary passport, as a parliamentarian he had a diplomatic one, according to the Brazilian press. Information about his escape indicates that he traveled from Rio de Janeiro to Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima, a state bordering Venezuela and Guyana where the couple worked as police officers. According to the same source, the convict crossed the border by land, it is not known with what documentation, and from there he moved to Miami.
There is a suspicion that, to mislead, the convicted coup plotter Ramagem presented some medical certificates to Congress, which allowed him to participate in parliamentary votes, even after his escape was completed. Judge Moraes, who confiscated Bolsonaro’s passport at the start of the investigation, will decide, as investigator of the case, whether the president stays at home due to his health problems or is fit to be admitted to a penitentiary centre.
This escape was preceded by that of a deputy Bolsonaro who fled to Italy after being sentenced to 10 years in prison (Brasilia requested his extradition), that of another parliamentarian under investigation who decided to return to his country by chance and that of Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the president, who after having settled in the United States to do lobby in favor of his father, he was accused of forcing the court that convicted his father, the now escaped police officer, and several generals, the first in history to be convicted of a coup.
