BRASILIA - Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro, detained after allegedly using a soldering iron on his court-ordered ankle monitor, argued that a state of "paranoia" had led him to tamper with the device.
The 70-year-old was taken to prison on Saturday from his home, where he had been under house arrest while appealing a coup-plotting conviction, after the Supreme Court deemed him a high flight risk.
The court sentenced Bolsonaro in September to 27 years in prison over a scheme to stop leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections.
The far-right firebrand has denied any wrongdoing and though he has already lost one appeal, he has until Monday for another challenge of his conviction.
During a hearing on Sunday in Brasilia, Bolsonaro stated he "experienced a certain paranoia between Friday and Saturday due to medication," according to a Supreme Court document obtained by AFP.
He also asserted "that he had no intention of fleeing and that there was no breakage of the bracelet's strap."
The former army captain further said he spent a good part of Friday afternoon trying to open the bracelet until he "came to his senses" around midnight and stopped.
In a video made public by the court on Saturday, Bolsonaro admitted that he had used a soldering iron on the monitoring bracelet out of "curiosity."
The video showed the device badly damaged and burned, but still on his ankle.
The court upheld the preventive arrest warrant against Bolsonaro.
Later, his lawyers asked the court to reconsider the measure and return Bolsonaro to "humanitarian house arrest" due to his "state of mental confusion."
The former president is experiencing "side effects from the various medications prescribed to him, beginning to have persecutory thoughts and becoming detached from reality," they said in a letter to the Supreme Court.
The medications he takes to relieve the "hiccup attacks" that have afflicted him for months are to blame for his condition, they added.
In its ruling on Saturday that sent Bolsonaro into custody, the Supreme Court noted that the US embassy is located near his residence.
The former leader is a close ally of US President Donald Trump, who has denounced the trial as a "witch hunt" and sanctioned a supreme court judge and his family.