On 6 September 2018, then federal deputy Jair Bolsonaro suffered an attack during a rally promoting his election campaign for the presidency of Brazil. While being carried through a crowd of supporters, Bolsonaro suffered a knife wound to the abdomen from Adélio Bispo de Oliveira.
Immediately after the attack, Bolsonaro was taken to the Santa Casa de Misericórdia in Juiz de Fora, where it was found that the stabbing had caused three injuries to his small intestine and an injury to a vein in the abdomen that caused heavy bleeding. Despite the seriousness of the injuries and the heavy loss of blood, the presidential candidate survived. In all, Bolsonaro underwent four surgeries related to the damage caused by the attack.
Adélio Bispo de Oliveira was arrested in the act by the Federal Police and taken to the city's central police station. After an investigation, the police concluded that he acted alone in the crime. In June 2019, de Oliveira's pre-trial detention was converted into an indefinite internment in the federal penitentiary of Campo Grande, capital city of Mato Grosso do Sul. The knife used in the attack was collected by the Federal Police and is currently on display in the corporation's museum in Brasília.
The attack has been used to spread conspiracy theories, both by Bolsonaro's supporters and critics, and even by Bolsonaro himself.
Political context
Brazil was going through a period of political polarization. In 2013, large popular demonstrations, known as the June Journeys, were the culmination of the crisis of political representation and awakened the politicization of a large part of the population, which reverberated in the 2014 presidential election. During this election period, tempers flared between Workers' Party (PT) supporters and anti-PT supporters, with the country's economic crisis as an aggravating factor. New political groups with different ideologies entered the debate, increasing the polarization. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter contributed to increasing polarization. At the end of 2013, the right united around the issue of corruption. Those on the left focused on social programs and public services. As political parties began to put these issues front and center of their platforms, the left and right drifted further apart. In August 2016, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff split the party lines, making the polarization even greater.
Political scientist Glauco Peres da Silva, from Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo, in an interview from Nexo Journal, said 'in Brazil many years exist a political violence'. Bolsonaro used an aggressive discourse, but he was not the promoter of the widespread unwillingness to engage in dialog. According to the expert, it all started with the rivalry between the PT and the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), which created jargon such as “coxinha” and “petralha”, and there was also society's inclination to lynch people rather than do justice. He lamented the way political disputes are viewed in Brazil, as if they were illegitimate, as if there couldn't be a group with divergent beliefs as well as the attitude of delegitimizing opponents. However, he opined that the attack could be a great opportunity for the candidates to call for calm and for the entire political class to declare that violence is unacceptable..
Despite the stabbing and the abrupt change of course in the candidate's campaign, who was prevented from taking to the streets and attending various events and debates, Jair Bolsonaro was the most voted candidate in the first round, on October 7, with 46.03% of the valid votes, ahead of Fernando Haddad (PT) with 29.28% of the votes. The two contested the second round on October 28, in which Bolsonaro was elected president with 55.13% of the valid votes, against Haddad's 44.87%.
Attack
Jair Bolsonaro's presidential campaign schedule called for the candidate to arrive in Juiz de Fora at 11 a.m. on 6 September. He was to visit the Ascomcer Hospital and have lunch with business leaders. He would then hold a public event in front of the city's Town Hall, in Halfeld Park, from where he would go to Praça da Estação, where he would hold his rally. Like the other candidates, Bolsonaro was escorted by Federal Police (PF) officers.
Bolsonaro was stabbed while being carried on his shoulders by supporters at a campaign event in Halfeld street, one of the most important streets in the central region of the Minas Gerais city of Juiz de Fora. He was wounded in the abdomen, injuring a major abdominal vein, which caused severe bleeding. The federal deputy was taken promptly to the Santa Casa de Misericórdia of Juiz de Fora, where he was admitted to the emergency room at around 3.40 p.m., with a sharp injury to his abdomen. The candidate underwent an exploratory laparotomy.
Perpetrator
The perpetrator of the attempted murder was arrested in the act by the Federal Police and identified as Adélio Bispo de Oliveira (born Montes Claros, 6 May 1978). De Oliveira claimed to have committed the crime "at the behest of God". His Facebook profile contained criticism of the political class in general, President Michel Temer, and conspiracy theories against Freemasonry. He was a member of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) between 2007 and 2014, and was already being prosecuted for bodily injury, allegedly committed in 2013. A niece said that de Oliveira had once been an evangelical missionary and had distanced himself from his family, adding that he “had troubled ideas”.
De Oliveira was at the Clube de Tiro 38, located in the city of São José, in the metropolitan region of Florianópolis, on 5 July 2018, after receiving information that it was a place frequented by two of Jair Bolsonaro's sons, federal deputy for São Paulo Eduardo Bolsonaro and Rio de Janeiro councilman Carlos Bolsonaro.
The Federal Police investigated a volume of 2 terabytes of files, including 150 hours of video and 1,200 photos. Data from Adélio's cell phone shows that he knew the candidate's schedule and that he filmed and photographed places where the candidate would be in the city, such as the hotel where there would be a lunch with businessmen, the Juiz de Fora City Hall, FUNALFA and that he had accompanied Bolsonaro all day. He used a knife bought in Florianópolis, carried it wrapped in a newspaper and hidden inside his jacket. Two witnesses said that Adélio approached the candidate on the pretext of photographing him. After the attack, a person captured the knife and handed it over to a nearby fruit seller, who put the instrument in a plastic bag and handed it over to the Federal Police. Afterwards, forensics confirmed that the genetic profile of the blood found on the blade was Jair Bolsonaro's.
Immediately after the attack, four lawyers were hired to defend de Oliveira. The versions given by them about the financing of the defense differ. The final report of the Federal Police, in the inquiry investigating the attack on Jair Bolsonaro, should indicate that Adélio Bispo de Oliveira acted alone in deciding to attack the presidential candidate in Juiz de Fora.
After listening to more than thirty people and breaking de Oliveira's financial, telephone and telematic confidentiality, federal delegate Rodrigo Morais and his team found no evidence that de Oliveira had acted at the behest of another person or group.
Preliminary PF investigations released on 18 October 2018, found de Oliveira's ties to the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), one of Brazil's main criminal organizations, including his friendship with members of the faction and the client history of Adélio Bispo de Oliveira's lawyers, which includes defending PCC members. The lawyers denied any links with the group. Shortly before the second round of the elections, which took place on October 28, the defense lawyers' financial backer(s) stopped passing on the money.
On 14 June 2019, federal judge Bruno Savino handed down Adélio's sentence, converting his pre-trial detention into indefinite internment. According to Savino, the defendant's “lack of legal liability [due to mental illness or defect] was proven” and he was therefore “exempt from punishment.” As a result, he was sent to the Federal Maximum Security Penitentiary in Campo Grande, because transferring him to the prison system, according to the sentence, “would entail a concrete risk of death.” Savino also said that Adélio had shown that he still intended to assassinate Bolsonaro.
Recovery
The complexity of the surgery Bolsonaro underwent made it impossible for him to continue campaigning in the 2018 elections in the traditional way, due to the minimum recovery time of one to two months. Shortly after the surgery, Senator Magno Malta recorded a video of Bolsonaro in his hospital bed. Bolsonaro said that he had only felt a bump, but after he realized what had happened, “the pain was unbearable”. He also said that he had “prepared for a moment like this, because you run risks”. The candidate asked: “How can human beings be so evil? I've never hurt anyone".
According to sources at the Santa Casa in Juiz de Fora, Bolsonaro lost between forty and fifty percent of the blood in his body. "An adult man like him has between five and five and a half liters", they said. He needed four bags of blood during the transfusion. According to the doctor and director of the hospital, Bolsonaro was not hit in “a region with many larger vessels” due to a matter of centimeters. The attack injured the superior mesenteric vein, as well as the large and small intestines. On September 7, Bolsonaro was transferred to Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital at around 8:20 a.m. (BRT).
The first medical bulletin after the attack was released on 9 September. The bulletin said that “the abdominal condition has improved in the last 24 hours and the patient persists in intensive care and with progress in the time spent out of bed and walking". The second bulletin, released on September 10, stated that Bolsonaro's condition was serious and that another surgery would be performed in the future to reconstruct the intestinal transit and remove the colostomy bag. The bulletin released on September 11 said that Bolsonaro's intestines had improved. On the same day, Flávio Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro's eldest son, said that his father had had his first oral feeding, moving from intensive to semi-intensive recovery.
On 12 September, Bolsonaro had his oral diet suspended due to abdominal distension. On the same day, Bolsonaro underwent emergency surgery to unclog the adhesion of the intestinal walls. He progressed well after the surgery. Bolsonaro remained in stable clinical condition on the 14th and later underwent physiotherapy. The candidate also remained stable on the 15th. On 16 September, he was discharged from the ICU and moved to the semi-intensive unit.
On 19 September, Bolsonaro began oral liquid feeding. On the 20th, he underwent drainage after a CT scan indicated the presence of fluid on the side of his intestine. He began to recover bowel movements on 21 September, and was discharged from the semi-intensive care unit the following day. Bolsonaro had the drain removed from his abdomen and began receiving a light (or soft) diet from 23 September, He remained hospitalized having made good clinical progress, but had a fever on the 28th.
Bolsonaro was discharged on September 29. In the following weeks, on medical advice, he remained at home for most of the time, but was allowed to go out briefly. Because of his limitations, he continued with his political campaign, giving interviews and posting on his social networks. After not appearing in the debate held by TV Globo, his first interview after the attack was given to TV Record's Jornal da Record, at his home, in which he criticized the PT. He was also able to make a number of statements on social media.
In April to May 2025, Bolsonaro underwent further surgery and was hospitalized at the DF Star clinic in Brasilia for 17 days to fix an intestinal obstruction as a result of the assassination attempt.
Investigation
The PF concluded its investigation on 28 September 2018 and determined that Adélio Bispo de Oliveira had acted alone. The investigation analyzed images of the attack on the circuit cameras of stores and banks at the scene of the stabbing and also found that Adélio Bispo de Oliveira had tried to attack Bolsonaro beforehand. The PF said that bank secrecy breaches did not indicate suspicious money and analysis of cell phones and chips brought irrelevant information, reinforcing the indications that he acted alone. In the report, the police reported that: "[de Oliveira had] previously photographed some places where Bolsonaro would be in the city. In other photos and images found on his cell phone, it was evident that he was with the candidate throughout the day, and even had access to the hotel where a lunch with businessmen was scheduled. Therefore, there are strong elements that Adélio made a prior, thoughtful and planned decision to attempt Bolsonaro's life".