The former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, denied on Monday that having slept a couple of days in the embassy of Hungary, where he stayed shortly after his passport was detained by the Federal Police, is a crime.
According to The New York Times, Bolsonaro took refuge between February 12 and 14 in the Hungarian Embassy in Brasilia, four days after the Federal Police launched an operation against him and his closest circle for attempting a coup d’état. against the Government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
“Perhaps sleeping in the embassy, ??talking to the ambassador, is there any crime in that? Stop persecuting,” said the former president in statements to journalists at the exit of a political promotion event for his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, in São Paul.
The far-right leader did not want to comment further on the matter on which his lawyers had previously spoken, stating that the former Brazilian president had been at the diplomatic headquarters as a “guest” and to talk about politics with authorities in that country, and that any other interpretation, like asking for asylum, is “fiction.”
The news has led the Supreme Court of Justice to give Bolsonaro a period of 48 hours to explain his stay in the diplomatic mission and to the Foreign Ministry to call the Hungarian ambassador, Miklós Halmai, for consultations.
In the police operation on February 8 against those accused of having participated in a coup plot against Lula, several people of Bolsonaro’s utmost confidence were arrested, on whom he also imposed a series of precautionary measures. Among them, his passport was confiscated, he was prevented from leaving of the country and prohibited him from maintaining contact with others investigated within the process of the plot that attempted to annul the 2022 presidential elections, which the progressive Lula won, and keep Bolsonaro in power.
The former president is only listed as being investigated in this case, although his judicial future has been complicated after the revealing testimonies to the Police of Marco Antonio Freire Gomes and Carlos Baptista Júnior, former commanders of the Army and Aeronautics.
Both declared that they met several times with Bolsonaro and his closest advisors, and that they invited them to support their plan to carry out a coup, which included intervening in the Superior Electoral Court, decreeing a state of siege and even arresting judges, as well as the head of Congress.
