By Staff, Agencies

Brazil’s Supreme Court confirmed on Tuesday that former President Jair Bolsonaro will begin serving a 27-year and three-month prison sentence for orchestrating a coup attempt after losing the 2022 election.

The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who ruled that Bolsonaro will remain in detention at the Federal Police complex in Brasilia, where he has been held since Saturday. The court rejected any transfer to a military or maximum-security facility.

Justice Moraes said Bolsonaro’s age and fragile health justified keeping him at the police headquarters. The former president, 70, was moved there after attempting to cut open his court-ordered ankle monitor with a soldering iron. On Sunday, Bolsonaro told an assistant judge that a recent change in his medication for chronic hiccups caused hallucinations and a nervous breakdown, which he claimed led to the incident.

Since his detention began, Bolsonaro has been held in a 12-square-meter room at the Federal Police site, where he has received visits from his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, and two of his sons. The court also denied a defense request to convert his sentence to house arrest, with Moraes arguing that the attempted tampering with the ankle monitor amounted to an attempted escape.

Bolsonaro was definitively sentenced in September for planning and directing a coup scheme designed to overturn his electoral defeat to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. According to the Supreme Court ruling, the plot even included provisions for the assassination of President Lula and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, though it was never executed due to resistance from senior military officers.

Before his imprisonment, Bolsonaro had spent over 100 days under house arrest in Brasilia for violating precautionary measures, including efforts to solicit US interference to derail criminal cases against him.