The United States restricted visas for Brazilian officials on Bolsonaro “Hunt of Witch” | Jair Bolsonaro News

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accuses the Brazilian judge of the Supreme Court of creating a “persecution spans complex”.

Washington will limit travel visas for Brazilian judicial leaders and their immediate family members, the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, announced on what he called a “political witch hunt” against former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

Announcing this decision on Friday, Rubio accused the Brazilian judge of the Supreme Federal Court Alexandre de Moraes of creating a radical “persecution and censorship complex which” violates not only the fundamental rights of Brazilians, but also extends beyond the banks of Brazil to target the Americans “.

“I therefore ordered revocations of visas for Moraes and its allies in the court, as well as their immediate members of the family, with immediate effect,” he said, without providing details on which would be subject to the measures.

The Brazilian newspaper O Globo also reported on Friday, without citing its source, that the United States had revoked the visas of the other judges of the Supreme Court of Brazil. If it is correct, the only judges of the Supreme Court not affected would be the judges appointed Bolsonaro Andre Mendonca and Nunes Marques, and judge Luiz Fux.

The United States’s decision comes after the Supreme Court of Brazil issued searization terms and retention orders against Bolsonaro on Friday, prohibiting him from contacting foreign officials in the midst of allegations that he courted the interference of American president Donald Trump in judicial affairs against him.

Explaining his decision, Moraes accused Bolsonaro – who was president from 2019 to 2023 – to attack Brazil’s sovereignty by encouraging the interference of the “head of state of a foreign nation” before his courts.

Bolsonaro’s current trial relates to the accusations he tried to make a coup and overthrow the electoral victory of the current president Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva in January 2023. State accusations contain a sentence of 12 years, and if it is found guilty of other charges, Bolsonaro could spend decades behind bars.

Bolsonaro is now forbidden to contact foreign officials, use social media or approach embassies. It was also forbidden to contact key allies, in particular his son Eduardo Bolsonaro, a member of the Brazilian congress working to support his father in Washington.

Federal police also made a descent into the house and the headquarters of Bolsonaro, the authorities ordering him to carry an ankle monitor following the decision of Moraes according to which there is a “concrete possibility” that he will try to flee the country.

Bolsonaro: “Trump of Tropics”

Addressing the reuters news agency at the headquarters of its party on Friday, Bolsonaro described Moraes as “dictator” and described the orders of the court as acts of “cowardice”.

“I feel a supreme humiliation,” he said when he was questioned about wearing the ankle instructor. “I am 70 years old. I was President of the Republic for four years,” he added.

Friday afternoon, a panel of judges from the Supreme Court of five judges examined and confirmed the decision of Moraes.

Bolsonaro also said he thought that court orders were a reaction to Trump’s criticism of his trial in the last indication that Washington’s interventions could harm rather than help the former president.

While Bolsonaro denied having planned to leave the country, he also declared that he would meet Trump if his passport, seized by the police last year, had returned.

Asked about Bolsonaro’s latest comments, the White House spokesman Anna Kelly said that the former Brazilian leader and his supporters were “attacked by an armed judicial system”.

Trump has maintained friendly links with the ideological ally Bolsonaro – known as “Trump of Tropics” – since the first term of the American leader from 2017 to 2021.

Trump shared a letter on Truth on Thursday, which he sent Bolsonaro deploring the “terrible treatment” of the former president besieged in the hands of an “unfair system turned against you”.

Earlier this month, Trump also threatened to impose a 50% rate on Brazilian products from August 1, when he called Lula’s government to abandon the charges against Bolsonaro.

Lula has promised to do the same, claiming that “any measure to increase the unilaterally reacted prices will be reacted to the light of the Brazilian law of economic reciprocity”.

In the decision of the court on Friday, Moraes also said that Trump’s threatened tariffs were an attempt to intervene in the country’s judicial system by creating a serious economic crisis in Brazil.

The prices – which would harm the main Brazilian sectors such as coffee, livestock farming and aviation – rallied public support behind the provocative left government.