Brazil’s top court suspends Flavio Bolsonaro’s visitation rights for 90 days after he read out a letter from his father on YouTube.
BRASILIA: Brazil’s top court on Monday barred presidential hopeful Flavio Bolsonaro from visiting his father, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest, until after the first round of October elections.
Flavio Bolsonaro this weekend read out a handwritten letter from his father on YouTube, despite Jair Bolsonaro being banned from using social media, either directly or through a third party.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said Flavio Bolsonaro had shown “disregard” for the ban and was “a repeat offender regarding disrespectful conduct toward court orders.”
He suspended Flavio’s visitation rights for 90 days, a measure expiring after the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on October 4.
Moraes also gave Jair Bolsonaro’s lawyers 48 hours to explain the “potential disobedience of a court order.”
Jair Bolsonaro, 71, is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup to overturn the result of the 2022 election won by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
He served several months in prison before being allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest due to health issues.
The far-right leader anointed his eldest son Flavio, a senator, as flagbearer for the country’s powerful conservative movement.
After an initial surge in opinion polls that put him neck-and-neck with Lula, Flavio’s campaign has taken a hit from a financial scandal and the airing of a family feud.
His ratings dwindled in May after an audio recording showed him asking a banker embroiled in a massive fraud scandal to finance a Hollywood film about his father titled “Dark Horse.”
Last month, former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro published two long videos on Instagram detailing her fallout with her stepson, who she said had humiliated and disrespected her in a dispute over party candidates.
In his letter, Jair Bolsonaro urged his allies to put aside their differences and rally behind his son’s election bid.
A lawyer with Flavio Bolsonaro’s campaign, Tracy Reinaldet, said Moraes’s ruling was “illegal and unconstitutional.”
He said in a statement that it was a violation of the right to receive visits from family members and maintain communication with the outside world.
He noted that Flavio Bolsonaro was also his father’s lawyer and the ban, therefore, “violates the lawyer’s right to communicate with his client.”
