By Ricardo Brito
BRASILIA, March 24 (Reuters) – Former President Jair Bolsonaro will serve prison time under house arrest after he is released from a hospital where he is being treated for pneumonia, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes decided on Tuesday.
Bolsonaro, 71, has been serving a 27-year prison sentence since November for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
In the decision, Moraes said Bolsonaro would be reassessed after 90 days to determine whether house arrest should be extended.
Lawyers for the right-wing leader, who governed from 2019 to 2022, had long sought Moraes’ permission for him to serve his sentence under “humanitarian house arrest,” but the justice had previously denied those requests.
The reversal comes after Bolsonaro was admitted earlier this month to the intensive care unit of a Brasilia hospital with an acute form of pneumonia. He has been discharged from the ICU, a Tuesday medical note showed.
Bolsonaro lawyer Paulo Cunha Bueno said the ruling “restored the court’s jurisprudential coherence,” mentioning the 76-year-old former President Fernando Collor, who was allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest last year after corruption and money laundering convictions, due to his age and health issues.
Still, Bueno added in a post on X that a “‘temporary’ modality of house arrest is uniquely innovative”, arguing Bolsonaro’s conditions and needs are permanent.
RECURRING HEALTH ISSUES
Bolsonaro has a history of hospitalizations and surgeries related to an abdominal stabbing during a 2018 campaign event.
In December, he underwent medical procedures to treat a hernia and persistent hiccups. He was hospitalized in January for a series of exams after falling and hitting his head.
Moraes had previously argued that Bolsonaro, who in January was transferred to a prison with a larger cell, could be treated in custody. The justice had also cited a flight risk when denying prior requests for house arrest.
Bolsonaro was imprisoned in November after he took a soldering iron to his ankle monitor. The ex-president had been wearing the device during house arrest while he appealed the coup plot conviction, which was later confirmed.
Bolsonaro blamed his hiccup medications for confusion that led him to tamper with the device.
Moraes ruled on Tuesday that the former president will have to wear an ankle monitor again under house arrest, and is prohibited from receiving visitors other than his lawyers, family members and doctors, among other restrictions.
TOP PROSECUTOR BACKS HOUSE ARREST
In a document sent to Moraes on Monday, Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet – a Lula appointee – said he supported returning Bolsonaro to house arrest.
“It has been demonstrated that the applicant’s health condition requires constant and careful attention that the family environment, but not the current prison system, is capable of providing,” Gonet wrote.
He noted that the Supreme Court had taken similar decisions in past cases.
(Reporting by Ricardo Brito in Brasilia; Editing by Gabriel Araujo, Cynthia Osterman and Aurora Ellis)
Comments