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Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro left a hospital Thursday to return to prison and resume serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup. In a ruling published earlier in the day, judges denied a request from Bolsonaro’s lawyers to grant him house arrest on health grounds.
Bolsonaro, 70, had been hospitalised for more than a week as he underwent surgery for a groin hernia and then a procedure to treat recurring bouts of hiccups.
“Contrary to what the defense alleges, there has been no worsening of Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s health condition,” Judge Alexandre de Moraes stated in his decision denying house arrest.
In office from 2019 to 2022, the ex-president has for years been dealing with complications from an abdominal stab wound he suffered during a 2018 campaign rally, requiring several major surgeries.
On Thursday, Bolsonaro was seen leaving the DF Star Hospital in Brasilia in police custody, bound for a small room where he is serving his sentence at a federal police facility.
In September, the Supreme Court found Bolsonaro guilty of conspiring to stay in power after narrowly losing the 2022 elections to leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Prosecutors said the plot, which included a plan to assassinate Lula, failed because of a lack of support from military top brass.
Bolsonaro, an ally of US President Donald Trump, dismissed the trial as a “witch hunt” aimed at preventing him from running for president again in 2026.
He was under house arrest until shortly before the start of his prison term in November. He was detained and sent to prison after he took a soldering iron to his ankle monitoring bracelet in what the court saw as an escape attempt.
