Brazil’s pro-censorship Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has issued an arrest warrant for Flavia Cordeiro Magalhaes, a US citizen of Brazilian origin, who has lived in Florida for over 20 years.
According to her legal representative, what Moraes is attempting to do here is lock up a US citizen for political speech expressed on US soil – meaning that the warrant in effect “raises questions about US sovereignty.”
Moraes appears to have first ordered Magalhaes’ X account blocked in Brazil because of a post from 2022, which she made while in the US.
According to Magalhaes, she was unaware of the block at the time, since she was not notified by the Brazilian court. But because she continued posting on X, this eventually led to an order to place her in pre-trial detention, under the pretext that she was allegedly in contempt of court.
That is supposed to have occurred when she traveled to Brazil in December 2023 and was told her Brazilian passport was “under restriction” – but even though she entered and left the country legally, using her US passport, Moraes decided to treat this as the use of “a false document” – and issue the pre-trial detention order in February of last year.
All this, despite Brazil’s federal police documents stating that Magalhaes traveled to and from Brazil legally.
Her lawyer in Brazil, Paulo Faria, provided a glimpse into how the justice system works in that country these days when he revealed that he was on a number of occasions denied requests to see the case files, while his attempt to argue that his client wasn’t served with any judicial decisions “had no effect.”
“The defense continues to press for the revision of the arrest and for the transparency of the process, while the opposition to the Brazilian government denounces the censorship and the persecution of dissenting voices,” said Faria.
This is just another example of actions undertaken by Moraes in a bid to stifle freedom of expression in Brazil, but also of Brazilians abroad, appearing to believe he can impose his court’s jurisdiction in other countries, and over citizens of those countries.
In addition, Moraes is embroiled in a number of controversies where Brazil’s legal system is used to target and censor US social media companies, all of it leading to considerations in the US Congress of placing the judge on the list of sanctioned individuals.
