Bolsonaro claims persecution in Brazil

BRASILIA:

Former conservative presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro said Friday that he fled Brazil to the United States because he was a victim of "persecution" in his country.

Bolsonaro, who lost Sunday's election runoff to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, secretly left Brazil on Tuesday and arrived in Florida aboard a private jet on Wednesday after traveling through Argentina and Ecuador.

"The persecution began even sooner than I imagined," the senator said during an Instagram livestream in which he discussed his decision to flee after his Brazilian passports were canceled as part of a money laundering investigation.

In the video, he recounted how police informed him Monday that his passports were being revoked as he left a visit to his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest.

"With tears in his eyes, he told me: 'You know where they're going with this, don't you?'" he said of his father.

"I told him: 'Dad, I know... Now I know what I have to do,'" he recounted.

Although he gave no details of how he left the country, he said he and his wife made the decision "without anyone knowing" and urged people not to "point the finger at anyone."