Brazil’s jailed ex-president Bolsonaro hospitalized with lung infection | Election news

The far-right leader, who has ongoing health problems linked to a 2018 stabbing, has endorsed his son to contest this year’s elections.

Brazil’s right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro, jailed for plotting a coup after losing the country’s last election, is being treated in intensive care after being hospitalized with bronchopneumonia.

DF Star Hospital in Brasilia said in a statement on Saturday that the 70-year-old was in stable condition despite being diagnosed with worsening kidney function.

The hospital added that there is no timeline yet for the former president’s discharge.

Bolsonaro, who will lead Brazil from 2019 to 2023, was hospitalized earlier in the day with a high fever, drop in oxygen saturation, sweating and chills.

The former president, who is serving a 27-year sentence for an alleged coup plot, developed bronchopneumonia, a condition caused by inhaling gastric material into the respiratory tract.

He was stabbed in the stomach at a campaign rally in 2018 and later had medical problems.

His lawyers requested that he be allowed to live under house arrest due to his need for medical attention, but Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected the petitions.

Bolsonaro was convicted in September last year of trying to overturn Brazil’s current president’s 2022 election defeat to leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Charges against him include leading an armed criminal organization and attempting to violently subvert the rule of law in a democracy. Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing.

The right-wing firebrand, an ally of United States President Donald Trump, remains a central figure in Brazil despite his imprisonment.

In December, he named one of his sons, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, as his chosen successor to challenge Lula in the next presidential election in October.

Flavio Bolsonaro told journalists in Brasilia that his father was in a “stable” condition.

“Unfortunately, we have to learn how to live with this. This is not the first, but the second or third time my father has been hospitalized for complications from a stabbing,” the presidential candidate said this week.

A 2018 stabbing attack led to Bolsonaro having several operations and other health problems, including persistent hiccups and vomiting.