今昔之感网Lawyer José Luis Mendes de Oliveira Lima72bet.com defense attorney for General Walter Braga Netto, running matetargetedby liesdefense stated Wednesday (Sep. 3) that his client could be sentenced to death in prison based on a “false plea bargain testimony” by Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, former aide-de-camp to ex-President Jair Bolsonaro. Braga Netto was chief of staff and Jair Bolsonaro’s running mate in the 2022 presidential election.
The lawyer emphasized that Mauro Cid gave his testimony after spending four months in prison and that he himself said, in audio recordings published by Veja magazine, that he had been coerced into speaking.
“There is no doubt that voluntariness in this plea bargain agreement was left out of the picture. [Mauro Cid] was coerced, and it wasn’t this lawyer who said so, he said so himself,” he argued.
According to Braga Netto’s lawyer, Cid gave 15 different versions of the facts under investigation. In one of the most serious accusations against the general, the lieutenant colonel said he received a large sum of money, inside a wine bag, to finance the coup.
He pointed out, however, that this information about the money only surfaced 15 months after Cid’s first testimony and after his plea bargain had been called into question by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, due to changes in the versions of the facts.
“Is it reasonable to imagine that it would take a whistle-blower 15 months to bring this fact to the attention of the presiding judge, the prosecution, and the police? It’s scandalous!” the lawyer exclaimed in his oral argument before the first panel of the Supreme Court, where the case is being heard.
“Is it because of this lie that my client will be sentenced to 20 years, that my client will die in prison?” he asked.
In a direct attack on Cid, Braga Netto’s lawyer called the lieutenant colonel “irresponsible” and “a poor-quality artist.” In his view, the plea bargain “is dust; it won’t stand; it’s nothing.”
The lawyer pointed out that the prosecution, in more than 500 pages of its closing arguments, did not present a single piece of evidence other than Cid’s word to request Braga Netto’s conviction.
“The prosecution gave a very well-read speech here, but it has no evidence. It is a speech, an accusatory narrative. You cannot convict someone based on narratives, but based on evidence,” the lawyer insisted.
