Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro speaks to the press at the Federal Senate in Brasilia on July 17, 2025, after a prosecutor asked Brazil's Supreme Court to find him guilty of plotting a coup. Mateus Bonomi/AFP via Getty Images

Brazilian democracy has spent the past three years in a near-permanent state of tension – a full-body clench against an ex-president who refused to accept defeat. On Saturday morning, those muscles tightened again.

Jair Bolsonaro, already convicted of plotting a coup and sentenced to 27 years in prison, was taken into preventive custody after Brazil’s Supreme Court said he had tried to tamper with his ankle monitor and was a flight risk.

It was one of the most extraordinary responses a democracy can deploy against a former leader. And yet, in Brazil’s c

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