By Marcela Ayres
BRASILIA (Reuters) -Brazil’s judiciary will not be intimidated by a U.S. decision to target officials involved in the trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro with visa bans, a senior judicial official said late on Friday, criticising the move as arbitrary.
In an escalation of tensions between U.S. President Donald Trump and the government of Latin America’s largest economy, Washington imposed visa restrictions on Friday on Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, his family and other unnamed court officials.
The visa bans were a response to the Supreme Court’s decision to issue search warrants and restraining orders targeting Trump ally Bolsonaro, who is accused of plotting a coup to overturn the results of a 2022 election he lost.
Solicitor general Jorge Messias, the top judicial official for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s executive branch, said in a statement posted on X that Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet was also targeted by the ban.
“Rest assured that no improper maneuver or sordid conspiratorial act will intimidate our country’s judiciary in the independent and dignified exercise of its task,” he added.
Messias said the Brazilian officials were subject to “arbitrary acts of visa revocation by a foreign nation on account of their fulfillment of their legitimate institutional responsibilities in accordance with constitutional terms.”
In addition to Moraes, seven other justices from Brazil’s 11-member Supreme Court were also hit by the U.S. visa restrictions, Government Institutional Relations Minister Gleisi Hoffmann said on Friday.
They include justices Luis Roberto Barroso, Dias Toffoli, Cristiano Zanin, Flavio Dino, Carmen Lucia, Edson Fachin, and Gilmar Mendes.
The Prosecutor General’s Office and the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump has criticised the proceedings against Bolsonaro as a “witch hunt”, a term he has used to describe his own treatment by political opponents, and has called for the charges to be dropped. In a letter last week, he announced a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods starting August 1, opening the message with criticism of the trial.
Bolsonaro is on trial before Brazil’s Supreme Court on charges of plotting a coup to stop Lula from taking office in January 2023.
The right-wing firebrand has denied that he led an attempt to overthrow the government but has acknowledged taking part in meetings aimed at reversing the election’s outcome.
(Reporting by Marcela Ayres; Editing by Joe Bavier)
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