Brasília (AFP) – Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was hospitalized in intensive care Friday after developing bronchopneumonia at the prison where the far-right leader is serving a sentence for plotting a coup. The 70-year-old had “high fever, a drop in oxygen saturation, sweating and chills,” according to a statement from DF Star Hospital in Brasilia that was shared on social media by his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro. The ex-leader was receiving intravenous antibiotics to treat “bilateral bacterial bronchopneumonia,” the statement said.
Bolsonaro’s eldest son Flavio, a senator and presidential hopeful, had said earlier on X that his father had woken up with chills and heavy vomiting. Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in a botched coup attempt after his 2022 election loss. He has suffered from recurring health issues since being stabbed in the abdomen during a campaign event in 2018. The Supreme Court has until now denied requests from Bolsonaro’s lawyers that he be allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest.
“They are playing with my father’s life,” Flavio Bolsonaro said Friday as he left the hospital. “At the very least, he should be granted humanitarian house arrest,” the senator told reporters. Brazil’s next presidential election is slated for October, and, despite his incarceration, Bolsonaro remains a central figure on the country’s political stage. The former president has designated Flavio as the right-wing candidate to challenge the incumbent leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Lula said Friday he had barred a US diplomat who had wanted to visit Jair Bolsonaro, one day after the Supreme Court banned the envoy over potential foreign interference. “I banned him from coming to Brazil,” Lula said of Darren Beattie, the US State Department’s new advisor on Brazil who had planned to meet with Bolsonaro in prison on March 18. A Brazilian diplomatic source confirmed to AFP that Beattie’s visa was revoked Friday due to “lies about the purpose of the visit.”
Brazil’s foreign ministry said Beattie’s visa had been granted exclusively to allow him to attend a forum on critical minerals and to participate in official meetings with Brazilian government officials. It said the visit of a foreign public official to a former president during an election year “could constitute undue interference” in Brazil’s internal affairs, according to court documents.
© 2024 AFP
