Brazil’s former spy chief who fled country arrested by ICE agents in US

When Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison for an attempted coup, six other members of his cabinet were also found guilty and all began serving their sentences – except for one.

Days before the verdict, Alexandre Ramagem, Bolsonaro’s former spy chief, fled by car to Guyana and boarded a flight to the United States, where he has remained ever since.

On Monday, he was arrested by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), apparently caught up in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Ramagem, a former federal police officer, was sentenced to 16 years in prison after the country’s supreme court concluded he had turned the Brazilian intelligence agency into a clandestine counterintelligence unit to illegally monitor officials seen as opponents of Bolsonaro.

Investigators found he had used spy software to track the geolocation of supreme court justices, lawmakers, journalists and public officials. He also monitored investigations involving Bolsonaro’s sons, including the senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who, following his father’s imprisonment, is emerging as a key opposition candidate in this year’s presidential election.

Read more: The Guardian (UK)