Brazil examines foreign help in Flavio Bolsonaro's flight abroad
Rubio denied direct US involvement, while Flavio Bolsonaro said he fled because he believes Brazil's democratic institutions no longer function.
Brazilian police are investigating whether US, Argentine and Israeli agents helped former presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro leave the country, Turkey's state-run news agency Anadolu Agency reported on Saturday.
The Washington Post reported that a senior Brazilian official, speaking anonymously, said a former agent of Israel's Mossad intelligence service was seen trailing the van carrying Bolsonaro toward the Argentine border.
Bolsonaro, who lost the presidential runoff to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, declined to share details of his journey in an interview with the newspaper.
Asked whether US officials had helped him leave, he said he would not discuss the route he took.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected suggestions that Washington was involved, saying the US government was not directly involved in any of the moves that were made.
Bolsonaro said he sought refuge in the United States because he believes Brazil's democratic institutions no longer work properly and that he could be arrested for his political views.
He also said US President Donald Trump shares his view that Brazil is no longer a full democracy.
Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly questioned the integrity of the election without presenting evidence, rejected the assessment of the president of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court that the vote was fair.
He said no one, including the court's president, could say with complete certainty that there was no fraud.
Bolsonaro said his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, was frightened after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered him to surrender his passports in a money-laundering investigation.
Recalling their final conversation before his departure, he said his father, with tears in his eyes, told him that he already knew where things were heading.
The elder Bolsonaro was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup after his 2022 election defeat.
Brazilian police, meanwhile, have little hope of bringing Flavio Bolsonaro back from the United States, with a senior security official describing the chances of capturing him as "zero."
