RIO DE JANEIRO — The emergency alert reached the Brazilian police at 12:07 a.m. Saturday: The former president’s ankle monitor had been tampered with.

Officers entered the home of the ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, to find the electronic monitor charred and mangled, but still strapped on.

There hadn’t been a fire or an accident. Instead, Bolsonaro had burned the device tracking his every move, he told police, days before he was expected to begin a 27-year prison sentence for trying to stage a coup.

Bolsonaro, 70, wasn’t trying to flee, his sons, allies and lawyers said. Rather, he felt unwell because of his medications.

“Bolsonaro would have no way of escaping,” Paulo Cunha Bueno, one of his lawyers, told reporters outside the police facility where Bolsonaro is being held in Brasília, t

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