Brazil’s Supreme Court orders the release of Jair Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp – World

This Friday, the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court (STF) ordered the release of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp, lieutenant colonel Mauro Cid. The decision was made by judge Alexandre de Moraes, who heads the cases against Bolsonaro and his allies in the STF.

The soldier’s release comes exactly one year after his first arrest, which took place on May 3, 2023, for participating in a plan by Jair Bolsonaro to carry out a coup d’état in 2022 after losing that year’s presidential election to Lula da Silva and also, among other accusations, for having planned and executed the falsification of the former president’s vaccination record, fraudulently including the Covid-19 vaccine in the document, so that the ruler could enter the USA. Released in November 2023 after having made a collaboration agreement with the justice system, in which he confessed to all his crimes and denounced irregularities allegedly committed by Bolsonaro, Mauro Cid was arrested again on March 22 of this year, after being caught in a telephone conversation telling an ally that he only made the agreement with the courts under coercion from the Federal Police, who forced him to tell lies to harm the former president.

Now, Alexandre de Moraes has ordered the release of the lieutenant colonel who for four years faithfully executed the legal and, it is now known, illegal orders given by Jair Bolsonaro, after a formal retraction from the soldier. TO THE STF, Mauro Cid denied having been coerced by the Federal Police or anyone else into accepting the plea agreement, saying that the caught conversation had been a mere outburst and bravado with a friend, just like the accusations he made in that same conversation classifying Alexandre de Moraes as a dictator who trampled on the laws and thought he was the owner of Brazil.

After the retraction, Moraes accepted the arguments of Mauro Cid’s lawyers and ordered his release, which should happen by Friday night. In the new agreement that led to his release, Cid committed to continuing to collaborate with justice and to clarify points of his previous agreement that investigations by the Federal Police themselves revealed to be incomplete or not corresponding to what actually happened, flaws that, according to with the officer’s lawyers, occurred due to mere forgetfulness or confusion on the part of their client, motivated by the stress of their situation after the end of the Bolsonaro government.