The general’s defense Walter Braga Net once again asked the minister Alexandre de Moraesof the Federal Supreme Court (STF), revoke the preventive detention of the former minister in the so-called “coup investigation”.
Lawyers José Luís Oliveira Lima and Rodrigo Dall’Acqua state that the general has no history of disobedience “nor conduct that justifies the adoption of such a severe measure”.
Braga Netto was preventively arrested on December 14 on suspicion of trying to obstruct the investigation into the alleged coup plot. According to the Federal Police (PF), he tried to obtain confidential information about Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid’s accusation to pass on to other people being investigated and also aligned versions with allies.
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Cid involved Braga Netto in his award-winning collaboration. The denunciation was under threat of termination, until the lieutenant colonel changed his strategy and decided to hand over the former minister, in a statement given directly to Alexandre de Moraes. Mauro Cid admitted that “not only him [Braga Netto] how other intermediaries tried to find out” what he said in the statement.
What the defense says
In a memorial sent to the STF, criminalists José Luís Oliveira Lima and Rodrigo Dall’Acqua, who defend Braga Netto, refute the PF’s main arguments that motivated the arrest. The defense claims that the PF “turned a blind eye to all the inconsistencies that undermine Mauro Cid’s credibility”.
“The normality (‘new facts’) with which the Federal Police received the collaborator’s unprecedented and contradictory version is impressive, as if lying were something commonplace in a plea bargain agreement”, states the general’s defense.
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Investigators believe that Braga Netto sought out General Mauro Cesar Lourena Cid, father of Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, to control what would be passed on to investigators and keep allies informed. Messages exchanged between them were deleted the day after they spoke by phone, in August 2023.
The defense claims that the PF did not prove that the conversations were deleted due to interference by Braga Netto. Lawyers say that, on the same day, Mauro Cid’s father spoke to 20 other people. They also highlight that it was Mauro Cesar who called Braga Netto.
“Lourena Cid deleted the messages from her cell phone after learning that her confidentiality could be broken by the CPMI of 8 de Janeiro”, say the lawyers. “It has been demonstrated that the Federal Police interpreted the information in a distorted way.”
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Another piece of evidence used by the PF to request Braga Netto’s preventive detention was a document with questions and answers about Mauro Cid’s accusation seized on the desk of Colonel Flávio Botelho Peregrino, the former minister’s advisor, at the headquarters of the Liberal Party (PL).
The defense claims that the document “replicates information that was already being conveyed by the media” and that there is no concrete evidence that the answers were passed on by Mauro Cid.
When asking for the general’s arrest, the PF also pointed out that he had financed the action of Army Special Forces officers, the “black kids”, to kill minister Alexandre de Moraes, the president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and or vice-president Geraldo Alckmin (PSB)in 2022. Braga Netto would have delivered resources in a wine bag. The information was also passed on by Mauro Cid in his statement.
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Lawyers dispute the lieutenant colonel’s version. “Mauro Cid was unable to say the date and also cannot say the location of the supposed delivery of money. The collaborator’s contradictory and generic words were also not subject to the essential evidentiary corroboration”, say the defenders.
The defense also uses a procedural argument. Lawyers José Luís Oliveira Lima and Rodrigo Dall’Acqua state that there is no contemporaneity to justify preventive detention and ask that Moraes consider replacing the prison with precautionary measures.
“The risk that would justify preventive detention is a mere presumption that criminal conduct – generally speaking – could be repeated. Without any concrete indication of recent reiteration”, states the defense.
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PGR
The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) is against the revocation of Braga Netto’s preventive detention. The Attorney General of the Republic, Paulo Gonet, states that the “reasons that supported the decree of preventive detention and the lack of new facts that alter the factual and evidentiary framework that supported the measure” remain.
The PGR had spoken out in favor of preventive detention as it understood that the measure was necessary to avoid interference in investigations into the alleged coup plot by allies of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL). Gonet stated, at the time, that there is sufficient evidence of “authorship and materiality of the serious crimes committed” and argued that Braga Netto represents a “concrete risk to public order and the application of criminal law”.
The general is one of 40 indicted by the PF for coup d’état, criminal organization and violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law. The former minister was mentioned 98 times in the “coup investigation” report and named as a “central figure” in the plot.
(With Estadão Content)
