Police in Brazil arrested former President Jair Bolsonaro on Saturday amid fears that he might escape house arrest to avoid serving a 27-year prison sentence for a failed coup plot, according to a Brazilian court order.
Mr. Bolsonaro, a right-wing politician who led Brazil from 2019 to 2022, was sentenced in September after being convicted of overseeing a plan to cling to power after losing his bid for re-election.
The Brazilian authorities were closely watching Mr. Bolsonaro, who had been wearing an ankle monitor since August at his home in Brasília, the capital. Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice overseeing the case, had deemed him a flight risk.
Mr. Bolsonaro had not begun serving his sentence because the court, until recently, was reviewing his appeals.
He was detained by federal police officers Saturday morning. It was a preventative measure to protect his safety and maintain public order before a demonstration planned by his supporters in front of his home, according to a top police official with direct knowledge of the situation who spoke anonymously to discuss a confidential case.
A Supreme Court order authorizing the arrest, which was seen by The New York Times, said Mr. Bolsonaro’s electronic ankle monitor had been tampered with just after midnight on Saturday. The tampering, the court order said, showed that Mr. Bolsonaro intended to break his ankle monitor and escape, “facilitated by the tumult caused by the demonstration.”
Mr. Bolsonaro’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In August, police said they had seized a document suggesting that Mr. Bolsonaro had planned to seek asylum in Argentina last year, shortly after the authorities carried out a sweeping operation targeting the former president, seized his passport and arrested some of his close allies.
Days after that operation, Mr. Bolsonaro spent two nights at the Hungarian Embassy in Brazil in an apparent bid for asylum in a country led by a right-wing ally, Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In an interview earlier this year, Mr. Bolsonaro refused to explain why he had slept at the embassy.
The arrest on Saturday came just days before Brazil’s Supreme Court was expected to order him to begin serving his sentence.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s lawyers had asked the court to allow him to serve his sentence at home because of health problems, which he attributed to complications from a stabbing attack on the campaign trail in 2018.
The conviction of Mr. Bolsonaro relied upon troves of evidence showing that he and his inner circle had spent months undermining voters’ confidence in Brazil’s electoral systems and then, after he narrowly lost the vote to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had attempted to keep him in power.
Those plans envisaged dissolving the Supreme Court, annulling the election result, and handing sweeping powers to the military. Prosecutors also accused Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies of plotting to assassinate perceived enemies, including Mr. Lula, his running mate and a Supreme Court justice who had opened several investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro.
He was ultimately convicted of staging a coup d’état, violently undermining democracy and being part of an armed criminal organization, among other crimes.
Mr. Bolsonaro has always denied the charges and said he had no knowledge of an assassination plot. He said that he sought ways within Brazil’s Constitution to correct what he claimed was a stolen election, although a review by Brazil’s military found no evidence of electoral fraud.
Leonardo Coelho contributed reporting.
Ana Ionova is a contributor to The Times based in Rio de Janeiro, covering Brazil and neighboring countries.
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