Bolsonaro says hallucinatory effects of meds made him tamper with ankle tag

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has told a judge that “hallucinations” provoked by a change in his medication led him to tamper with his angle tag while under house arrest for an attempted coup.

In a custody hearing on Sunday following his detention the previous day over the incident, the far-right former leader told a Supreme Court judge that he experienced a medicine-induced “paranoia” that led him to take a soldering iron to the device.
“[Bolsonaro] said he had ‘hallucinations’ that there was some wiretap in the ankle monitoring, so he tried to uncover it,” said Assistant Judge Luciana Sorrentino in a court document published shortly after the online hearing with the former president.
Sunday’s meeting was procedural in nature, but provided an opportunity for Bolsonaro’s lawyers to argue that the former president should remain under house arrest due to poor health. De Moraes has previously rejected similar requests.
A panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled in September that Bolsonaro tried to stage a coup and keep the presidency after his defeat by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2022, sentencing him to 27 years and three months in prison.

On Monday, the same panel will vote on the pre-emptive arrest order.

President Lula made his first comments about his predecessor’s jailing at a meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) bloc of nations in South Africa. “The court ruled, that’s decided. Everyone knows what he did,” Lula told journalists.