Cid’s complaint reaches the STF amid debate about torture – 09/09/2023 – Power

The plea agreement by former aide-de-camp Mauro Cid receives approval from the STF (Supreme Federal Court) amid recurring criticism from some ministers regarding the particularities of this collaboration instrument.

The court today has magistrates who, after the rise of Lava Jato, were against whistleblowing both in speeches and in decisions, to the point of comparing methods adopted by the operation to torture practices, as was the case with Minister Dias Toffoli. The agreement with Cid, a former assistant to Jair Bolsonaro (PL), was approved this Saturday (9) by minister Alexandre de Moraes, rapporteur of the investigations involving the former president.

Toffoli, in last week’s decision in which he declared the evidence arising from the leniency agreements (a type of plea bargain for a legal entity) of the construction company Odebrecht useless, wrote that public agents made serial errors in Lava Jato.

For the minister, employees acted in collusion to target authorities, companies and specific targets. He also patted President Lula (PT) by saying that his arrest was a set-up.

Without directly citing the allegations, the magistrate recalled a statement he made during the trial in the Second Panel, in which he stated that members of the task force used “true psychological torture, a 21st century macaw stick, to obtain ‘evidence’ against innocent”.

The expression “pau de arara” describes a technique used by the military dictatorship (1964-1985). In it, the person is suspended from a bar, with arms and feet tied, while suffering blows and electric shocks, for example.

Toffoli stated that hundreds of leniency agreements and plea bargains “were concluded as illegitimate means of putting innocent people in prison” and are now “falling apart, day after day.”

Ministers such as Gilmar Mendes, Cristiano Zanin —Lula’s lawyer at Lava Jato and appointed by him to the STF— and Kassio Nunes Marques have also taken a stance against collaboration, disagreeing with them on the merits or using non-conformities as justification.

When defending the president, Zanin said that “mentioning Lula’s name has become a mandatory condition for defendants and even convicts” to obtain benefits in Curitiba, with judicial decisions often based only on reports.

There is speculation that the name chosen by the president to replace Rosa Weber — who is retiring this month — is equally averse to car wash and has a guarantor profile, that is, with a tendency to privilege individual rights and the presumption of innocence in trials. .

The plea bargain negotiated by Mauro Cid with the Federal Police went to Moraes’ office for approval. One of the aspects analyzed in order to accept cooperation or not is what advantage it will give to the investigations. It is evaluated, for example, what the soldier can present again and what evidence he will provide.

Cid is being investigated on several fronts and has been imprisoned in a military unit in Brasília since May. His father, retired Army general Mauro Lourena Cid, was the target of a PF search and seizure operation in the jewelry case. His wife, Gabriela Cid, testified in the investigation regarding falsified vaccination cards.

Moraes has already made statements in favor of the allegations, with the exception that the strategy cannot be used in isolation to support sentences without other information corroborating the statements. He preaches caution and endorses the view that this is a means of obtaining evidence.

The discussion about Cid’s situation, in theory, should only involve other ministers in the event of an incident, such as a request for invalidation. For now, the responsibility lies with the rapporteur of the investigations.

In July, the STF was unanimous in a case reported by Moraes that allowed collaboration in cases of administrative improbity, that is, in the civil sphere. In his vote, he demanded compliance with certain parameters, such as the need to gather evidence that ratifies the words.

The understanding was followed by the other nine ministers of the trial — Toffoli, Gilmar, Kassio Nunes Marques, Rosa, Cármen Lúcia, Luís Roberto Barroso, André Mendonça, Edson Fachin and Luiz Fux.

Gilmar is a notorious critic of the way Lava Jato applied the instrument. He opposed, mainly, agreements approved by former judge Sergio Moro, who is now a senator for the Brazil-PR Union.

The STF minister has also equated closed statements with collaborators with long periods of imprisonment to torture. When messages obtained by the website The Intercept Brasil exposed the closeness between Moro and prosecutors, he considered that the abuses were exposed.

Gilmar suggested that members of the operation induced prisoners to denounce specific people and went as far as blackmail, threatening relatives of the candidates for the agreement with arrest and investigation in order to leave them vulnerable and, thus, be able to extract the desired reports.

“People were only released, released, after confessing and making an agreement”, said the magistrate, in May, during a session. “Things of perverts. Clearly it was torture using the power of the State.”

At the height of Lava Jato, a proposal by PT members to prohibit agreements with arrested defendants was presented in Congress.

In 2021, the STF held an intense debate on the topic when judging the case of former governor of Rio de Janeiro Sérgio Cabral. Seven of the 11 ministers voted to revoke the approval of his collaboration with the PF, agreeing with the Attorney General’s Office, which pointed out the lack of approval from the Public Ministry.

Kassio Nunes Marques, appointed by Bolsonaro, at the time aligned himself with the thesis that, in addition to the original flaw, the collaboration was not effective. He also responded to the request of former Petrobras president José Sérgio Gabrielli and overturned a fine imposed on him as he understood that the sanction was based solely on whistleblowing, “without other minimal evidence to corroborate the accusation”.

Denunciation is also suggested as an alternative for other former Bolsonaro assistants, although with fewer chances.

Former director general of the Federal Highway Police Silvinei Vasques, arrested since August on suspicion of the corporation’s interference in the 2022 elections, refuted the hypothesis through his defense. Lawyer Eduardo Simão said that the instrument is “for criminals” and that his client “is a national hero”.

Anderson Torres’ defense also ruled out an agreement by Bolsonaro’s former Minister of Justice, arguing that he intends to collaborate with the PF investigations. Torres, who left prison in May, had been in prison since January for alleged failure to act in the coup attacks on the 8th.