Brazil’s Bolsonaro stayed 2 days in Hungarian embassy after passport seized
- New York Times first reported Bolsonaro’s embassy stay, which raises questions about his plans as he faces multiple criminal investigations in Brazil
- On Monday, Brazil’s foreign ministry summoned Hungary’s ambassador to clarify the reasons behind Bolsonaro’s stay at the embassy from February 12-14
Brazil’s far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro stayed for two nights at the Hungarian embassy in Brasilia last month, just days after federal police confiscated his passport and arrested two former aides on suspicion of plotting a coup, Bolsonaro’s lawyer said on Monday.
Bolsonaro’s February 12-14 stay at the Hungarian embassy was first reported by The New York Times newspaper based on security camera footage from inside the embassy.
Were the Federal Police to obtain an arrest warrant for the former president, officers would not have jurisdiction to enter the Hungarian embassy because of diplomatic conventions restricting access.
Bolsonaro’s lawyer Fabio Wajngarten said on social media that the ex-president spent two days housed in the Hungarian embassy “to maintain contact with officials of the friendly country” and “get updates on the political landscape of both nations”.
“Any other interpretations that go beyond the information provided here are clearly fictional, unrelated to the reality of the facts and are, in practice, just another piece of fake news,” Wajngarten wrote.
Speaking at his party’s headquarters in Sao Paulo, Bolsonaro told supporters he gets many calls from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to discuss politics.
“To this day I have a relationship with some heads of state around the world,” Bolsonaro said. “If I had my passport, I would have travelled to Israel.”
The visit took place just days after federal police seized Bolsonaro’s Brazilian and Italian passports and raided the homes of his top aides as part of an investigation into whether they plotted to ignore 2022 election results and stage an uprising to keep the defeated leader in power.
Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing regarding this investigation, and multiple others targeting him.
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Bolsonaro flew to the US in the final days of his term, in December 2022, just days before his supporters stormed the capital in a failed bid to oust President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from power. He remained in South Florida for three months.
Some of Bolsonaro’s political rivals seized on Monday’s news to call for his arrest, alleging that he once again is signalling plans to escape.
“These images just reinforce that Bolsonaro is a confessed fugitive,” Alexandre Padilha, Lula’s minister of institutional relations, told reporters in Brasilia, citing Bolsonaro’s stint in the US last year. “But what the courts and the Federal Police will do with these images [published by The New York Times] isn’t for me to say.”
Augusto de Arruda Botelho, a criminal lawyer who has been an outspoken critic of the former president, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “Bolsonaro’s act of hiding in the embassy is a classic motive for decreeing preventive detention”.
“It is one of those situations used as an example in books and classrooms,” he added.
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Police seized Bolsonaro’s passport on February 8 and accused him of editing a draft decree to overturn the results of the 2022 election, pressuring military chiefs to join a coup attempt and plotting to jail a Supreme Court justice.
Last year a Brazilian court ruled that Bolsonaro is ineligible for political office until 2030 for spreading electoral misinformation during the 2022 election.
Two weeks ago, the former heads of Brazil’s army and air force confirmed that Bolsonaro had discussed the draft decree to prevent the handover of power after the vote.
On March 19 federal police also accused him of fraud on his vaccination records, opening the door to criminal charges.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
