Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday banned a US diplomat who wanted to visit the jailed former far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro amid fears of US meddling ahead of elections this year.
Bolsonaro, sentenced for plotting a coup, was on Friday hospitalized in intensive care after developing bronchopneumonia.
US President Donald Trump has called the case against his Latin American ally a “witch hunt.”
Photo: AFP
Lawyers for Bolsonaro earlier this week asked the Brazilian Supreme Court to allow Darren Beattie, the US Department of State’s new adviser on Brazil, to visit Bolsonaro in prison on Wednesday.
The Supreme Court initially agreed to the visit, but later revoked the authorization after the Brazilian government cautioned against the meeting.
“I banned him from coming to Brazil,” Lula said on Friday at an event in Rio de Janeiro.
A Brazilian diplomatic source told Agence France-Presse that Beattie’s visa was revoked on Friday due to “lies about the purpose of the visit.”
The US diplomat would not be allowed into Brazil until Washington lifted a visa ban on Brazilian Minister of Health Alexandre Padilha, Lula said.
Padilha was sanctioned late last year over his role in a program to employ Cuban doctors in Brazil.
Bolsonaro, 70, is serving a 27-year sentence over his failed bid to remain in power after his defeat by Lula in 2022.
He was suffering from “high fever, a drop in oxygen saturation, sweating and chills,” and receiving intravenous antibiotics to treat “bilateral bacterial bronchopneumonia,” the DF Star Hospital in Brasilia said in a statement.
His medical team on Friday told a news conference that his condition was “stable,” but gave no indication of when he might be discharged.
Bolsonaro’s trial last year sparked the ire of the Trump administration, which imposed high tariffs on a range of Brazilian goods as punishment.
Washington scaled back the tariffs after a meeting between Lula and Trump in October last year.
However, Brazil remains wary of Trump’s campaign to sway events in Latin America, after his abduction of former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and attempts to influence elections from Argentina to Honduras.
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