BRAZIL’s former president Jair Bolsonaro must wear an electronic monitoring device as he awaits a verdict in his trial on charges of plotting a coup, a Supreme Court judge ruled on Friday.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes, a Bolsonaro adversary who is overseeing the trial now in its final stages, said the far-right leader and his son Eduardo had incited “hostile acts” against Brazil.
Bolsonaro is accused of seeking to stay in power by overturning the 2022 election won by his left-wing opponent, current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
He lashed out at the monitoring device order, calling it a “supreme humiliation”.
The case is an extraordinary reckoning for a country still haunted by a two-decades-long military dictatorship that ended in 1985.
It has also thrust Brazil into an escalating row with the United States, where President Donald Trump is using trade tariffs to try and pressure the court to end the trial.
Prosecutors say Bolsonaro’s 2022 plot failed only because the military did not side with him.
Violent supporters then rioted, rampaging through government buildings in the capital, Brasilia in scenes that echoed the assault on the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters after the Republican lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
On Tuesday, the prosecution told the top court that former army officer Bolsonaro and seven others were guilty of participating in “armed criminal association” and had sought to “violently overthrow the democratic order”.
A five-justice panel is now set to decide the fate of the former president.
If found guilty, Bolsonaro and his co-defendants could face up to 40 years in prison.
Trump has repeatedly called on social media for Bolsonaro’s “witch hunt” trial to be halted.
On Thursday, Trump published a letter addressed to Bolsonaro saying that “the trial should end immediately!” and calling the right-wing leader “highly respected”.
On July 9, Trump ramped up his pressure campaign by announcing plans to tariff Brazilian imports to the United States at 50 per cent.
Washington also says it is opening an investigation into “unfair trading practices” by Brazil, a move that could provide a legal basis to justify imposing tariffs on South America’s largest economy.
Unlike the tariffs Trump is slapping on countries around much of the world, including top US allies, the measures against Brazil which are set to take effect on August 1 were announced in openly political terms.
Trump cited “Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections,” among other issues, warning of further escalation if the country retaliated something Lula indicated would happen.
Lula called Trump’s tariff threat “unacceptable blackmail.”
“Brazil has only one owner: the Brazilian people,” the leftist president said on Thursday.