Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro said in a statement posted Sunday, Nov. 1, that he does not regret his actions and criticized court measures against him. (Foto: Instagram)
Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro said in a statement posted Sunday, Nov. 1, that he does not regret “anything at all” he has done. He criticized recent court actions against him and said his move abroad was not a departure from Brazil but an act “for Brazil.” Bolsonaro has been in the United States since Oct. 28, according to the report, after losing the presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro said several news organizations had approached him for interviews, including TV Globo, which invited him to appear on its program Fantástico. He said he agreed on the condition that the interview be aired in full, without edits or prohibited topics, but that the network chose not to proceed. He also predicted that Fantástico would air a lengthy report about him without giving him a chance to respond, and argued that the country’s largest media group had no moral standing to judge him or damage his reputation.
In the statement, Bolsonaro claimed a court imposed precautionary measures on him seven minutes after the election result was announced, which he said were based on lies. He said that 12 hours later, while he was leaving the home of former President Jair Bolsonaro, he was notified of what he described as the start of a campaign of persecution. He portrayed his father as a comorbid person who had been sentenced to more than 27 years in prison despite, in Flávio Bolsonaro’s view, committing no crime. He also said his father had been separated for more than a year and a half from another son because of what he called illegal and arbitrary persecution.
Bolsonaro described the situation as incompatible with democracy and said it did not amount to a fair and impartial judicial process. He also referred to a Federal Police summons following an order by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes requiring him to surrender his passports. Bolsonaro alleged that a judge acting with malicious intent had sent police to his home to search through his daughters’ underwear drawers. These were his allegations in the statement.
He said he was now in a country where he could express his views freely and described his presidential campaign as a challenge to a system that, in his view, benefits its own members while making life worse for the public. He cited a statement he attributed to Cristiano Zanin, dated Aug. 7, 2016, that “there is no effective remedy in Brazil to stop human rights violations.” Bolsonaro said he planned to speak with major Brazilian and international news organizations in the coming days, without edits or filters, adding that people would hear what he said could no longer be voiced from Brazil.
