Former President Jair Bolsonaro will serve his sentence under house arrest after being discharged from the hospital where he is being treated for pneumonia, as decided this Tuesday by the judge of the Supreme Court of Brazil Alexandre de Moraes.
Bolsonaro, 71, has been serving a 27-year prison sentence since November for conspiring to carry out a coup d’état after losing the 2022 elections to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
In the resolution, Moraes indicated that Bolsonaro would be reevaluated after 90 days to determine if the house arrest should be extended.
The lawyers of the right-wing leader, who governed from 2019 to 2022, had been asking Moraes for some time to allow him to serve his sentence under “house arrest on humanitarian grounds,” but the judge had previously denied those requests.
The change in position comes after Bolsonaro was admitted earlier this month to the intensive care unit of a hospital in Brasilia with pneumonia.. He has been discharged from the ICU, according to a medical report on Tuesday.
Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Paulo Cunha Bueno, said the resolution “reestablished the court’s jurisprudential coherence,” and mentioned former president Fernando Collor, 76, who was allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest last year after being convicted of corruption and money laundering, due to his age and health problems.
However, Bueno added in a post on arguing that Bolsonaro’s conditions and needs are permanent.
Recurring health problems
Bolsonaro has a history of hospitalizations and surgeries related to an abdominal stab wound suffered during a campaign event in 2018.
In December, he underwent medical procedures to treat a hernia and persistent hiccups. In January he was hospitalized to undergo a series of tests after falling and hitting his head.
Moraes had previously argued that Bolsonaro, who was moved to a prison with a larger cell in January, could receive treatment in custody. The judge had also alleged a flight risk by denying previous requests for house arrest.
Bolsonaro was jailed in November after using a welder to cut off his ankle monitor. The former president was wearing the device during his house arrest while appealing his conviction for the coup plot, which was later confirmed.
Bolsonaro blamed his anti-hiccup medications for the confusion that led him to manipulate the device.
Moraes ruled Tuesday that the former president will have to wear an ankle monitor again under house arrest, and he is prohibited from receiving visitors other than his lawyers, family and doctors, among other restrictions.
