Morocco’s High Atlas region received heavy snowfall over the weekend, as a cold front brought snow, rain and strong winds to mountainous areas across the country.

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British-Nigerian boxer Anthony Joshua was involved in a road accident on Monday in Makun, Ogun State, south-west Nigeria.

The house arrests of eight of the 10 convicts in the coup plot ocurred in Brasília were upheld after a hearing held on Saturday (Dec. 27) by auxiliary judge Luciana Yuki Fugishita Sorrentino, from the office of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

The hearings aimed to fulfill legal formalities, as the arrests had already been ordered by Moraes, the rapporteur for the coup plot cases at the Supreme Court. Among those who participated in the custody hearings were six Army officers, a senior official of the Federal Police, and Filipe Martins, a former international affairs adviser to former President Jair Bolsonaro.

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Carlos Cesar Moretzsohn Rocha, president of Instituto Voto Legal, was not located by the Federal Police and is considered a fugitive. The house arrest warrant against Army Lieutenant Colonel Guilherme Marques de Almeida was also not served. He traveled to Bahia but committed to returning to Goiânia to begin serving the measure.

Escapes

The house arrests were ordered by Moraes as a preventive measure against further escapes. On Friday (26), former Federal Highway Police director Silvinei Vasques was detained by local authorities after fleeing to Paraguay and attempting to board a flight to El Salvador with a false passport.

According to Moraes, there is a coordinated strategy among individuals convicted of coup-related offenses to leave the country. The justice pointed to multiple escape cases, including that of former Representative Alexandre Ramagem to the United States.

“The modus operandi of the criminal organization convicted by the Supreme Court indicates the possibility of planning and executing escapes outside the national territory, as carried out by the defendant Alexandre Ramagem, including with the help of third parties,” Justice Moraes stated.

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A report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an organ linked to the Organization of American States (OAS), stated that Brazil has “strong and effective” democratic institutions and dismissed claims of censorship in the country.

According to the report, prepared after a technical visit to the country in February of this year and released on Friday (Dec. 26), the Brazilian state holds free and fair elections, maintains the separation of powers, and operates under the rule of law, with constitutional guarantees for the protection of human rights. The IACHR also affirms that there is judicial autonomy and a fully functioning system of checks and balances.

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The document contradicted the narrative promoted by allies of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who had sought to convince the international community that there was political persecution and restrictions on freedom of expression in Brazil.

The text also acknowledges that the country has experienced deliberate attempts to delegitimize the 2022 election results, as well as the planning and execution of an attempted coup d’état. In this context, the commission assesses that the defense of democracy is an essential condition for the full exercise of freedom of expression.

“The defense of democracy in Brazil is also a fundamental component of the defense of the right to freedom of expression, since freedom of expression requires a democratic society to be fully exercised,” the report emphasizes.

The IACHR Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Pedro Vaca Villarreal, was in Brazil in February and met with Bolsonaro, Supreme Court justices, government officials, and representatives of civil society. At the time, the meeting with the former president took place amid pressure from conservative lawmakers in the United States for the OAS to adopt a tougher stance against decisions by the Brazilian Supreme Court.

Warnings to the Judiciary

Despite rejecting the censorship argument, the IACHR makes recommendations and issues warnings to the Brazilian Judiciary, especially the Supreme Court. The document acknowledges the Court’s “fundamental role” in investigating and containing attacks on democratic institutions but points to concerns about the risk of excessive concentration of power.

“Although the defense of democracy should underpin the state’s actions, there is a risk of transforming a temporary solution, intended to be exceptional, into a lasting problem,” the text states, mentioning the possibility of creating precedents that could be used by authoritarian regimes in the future.

The document makes the following recommendations to the Brazilian Judiciary:

• Decisions regarding the removal of content on social media should be duly justified and communicated to the platforms and affected users;
• Restrictions on freedom of expression should not be based on vague concepts such as “information disorder” or “decontextualized information”;
• The category of “anti-democratic acts” should not be used to limit legitimate criticism of authorities.

Advocacy for regulation

The report also argues for the need to regulate digital platforms, provided that international human rights standards are respected. The IACHR recommends the creation of legal frameworks to address the challenges of the digital environment and the use of artificial intelligence.

The document, however, stressed that platforms should not be automatically held responsible for third-party content, provided they fulfill adequate moderation duties.

Overall, the OAS report reinforces the assessment that Brazil faces challenges related to freedom of expression, but within a democratic institutional environment and far from any scenario of censorship.

Political reactions

The Brazilian government assessed that the report reinforces the absence of censorship in the country and does not open the door to international sanctions against Brazilian authorities. The minister-chief of the Secretariat of Institutional Relations, Gleisi Hoffmann, welcomed the document’s content and stated that it dismantles the narrative that Brazil is living in a “dictatorship.”

“The international recognition of the truth about the coup is yet another victory for Brazilian Justice and democracy as 2025 comes to a close, and a reminder to remain vigilant against any attempt at amnesty or sentence reductions for convicted coup plotters,” Hoffmann posted on the social network X on Sunday (28).

Allies of former president Jair Bolsonaro also attempted to interpret the report in their favor. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro wrote on social media that the document confirms criticisms raised by the opposition, pointing to risks associated with concepts such as hate speech and disinformation.

“My interpretation of the report is that ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ are used to persecute predetermined targets, that democracy in Brazil is relative, and that there is no longer parliamentary immunity for right-wing politicians,” the senator wrote on X on Friday (26).

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