Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva revokes Darren Beattie’s visa in retaliation for Brazilian health minister being denied visa for US
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said he has “forbidden” one of Donald Trump’s advisers from visiting the South American country in retaliation for his health minister being denied a US visa.
Darren Beattie, a far-right political strategist who was recently tapped for a senior advisory role on Brazil, had reportedly hoped to use a trip to the country to visit the former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup to stop Lula taking power after the 2022 election. Beattie is a longstanding critic of Brazil’s judiciary and president and once called the moderate leftwing leader a representative of “the most destructive and corrosive version” of communism.
On Friday, after a supreme court judge refused Beattie permission to visit the incarcerated politician, Lula announced that he had given orders for the Trump aide’s visa to be revoked.
“That American guy who said he was coming here to visit Bolsonaro, he’s been barred from visiting and I have forbidden him from coming to Brazil so long as they don’t free up the visa of my health minister, which has been blocked,” Lula said during an event at a trauma centre in Rio de Janeiro.
