WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th January, 2023) The State Department is aware of reports that former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was hospitalized in the United States, but it will not comment on them, spokesperson Ned price said on Monday.
"I am aware of the reports that he has been hospitalized," Price told a briefing. "Of course, he is a private citizen, so we wouldn't comment on that from here."
Bolsonaro has been admitted to AdventHealth Celebration hospital in the US state of Florida with severe abdominal pain, Brazilian newspaper Globo reported earlier in the day. The report comes a day after the ex-president's supporters stormed government buildings in Brasilia in protest of the 2022 presidential election results, which saw the former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva reclaiming the top office.
In late December, Bolsonaro went to the US to spend New Year's Eve at former US President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Bolsonaro neither participated in the inauguration of his successor Lula da Silva on January 1 nor intended to hand over the presidential sash.
Bolsonaro has had health problems since an assassination attempt in 2018, when he was stabbed during a campaign rally in the town of Juiz de Fora, about 125 miles north of Rio de Janeiro, nearly a month before the election. The knife damaged the mesenteric artery, which provides blood supply to the intestines. He underwent several surgeries afterward.
