The lieutenant colonel Mauro Cesar Barbosa Cidbetter known as Colonel Cid, has a long history with the former president’s family Jair Bolsonaro. The Brazilian Federal Police – reports Globo News – found ex-captain Bolsonaro’s trusted right-hand man’s mobile phone exchanges of messages, audio and even the draft of a coup d’état to keep the former president in power, after the presidential election defeat in November. The disturbing draft would concern the so-called Glothe constitutional instrument that allows the President of the Republic to convene the Armed forces to restore public order in exceptional situations, such as the one that occurred onJanuary 8th in Brasilia, when thousands of Bolsonarists stormed the palaces of power.
Colonel Cid remained silent on Tuesday when he had to give evidence on the contents of the coup plot that emerged from the messages received and exchanged with Ailton Barrosthe former Army major arrested in May, and with Colonel Élcio Franco. In the messages addressed to Cid by Bolsonaro’s former allies there are indications of a sequence of acts – writes the magazine capital letter – to prevent Lula from assuming the presidency. The conspiracy would also have planned to intervene against the Supreme Federal Court and sabotage the electoral system, convincing the generals to break with democracy. There is still no information on whether or not Bolsonaro was aware of the disturbing coup material collected by the assistant and son of General Mauro Cesar Lourena Cid, former fellow soldier of the former president in the training course for Army officers in the academy military of the “Agulhas Negras”.
High graduates who worked side by side with Bolsonaro during the presidency years were trained at the “Black Needles” academy, including the eminence grise of the former government, General Augustus Hellenus, who commanded the Presidency’s Institutional Security Cabinet (GSI) until January 31, i.e. eight days before the Bolsonarist uprisings in Brasilia. Senator Eliziane Gama, the rapporteur of the Cpmi – the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry of the National Congress, created in recent days to investigate anti-democratic attacks – declared that Colonel Cid will be interrogated immediately by the Commission which will listen to military and civilians who allegedly financed the coup acts and activists encamped in front of the barracks during and after the presidential election. The list is long, more than 40 people, including the general Walter Braga Netto, former Minister of the Interior; Augusto Heleno, former GSI minister; Anderson Torres, former Attorney General and Secretary of Public Safety for the Federal District; and Silvinei Vasques, former director general of the Federal Traffic Police.
Colonel Cid was an “Ajo”, as aides-de-camp are called in power circles, who act as full-time private secretaries, are discreet, sometimes even charge bosses’ cellphones, welcome visitors, write requests and, very important, they see and hear everything. According to the newspaper Extra, Cid assumed the influential role of adviser for Bolsonaro, a fact that aroused envy. In 2020, the soldier had to testify in the investigation opened by the Supreme Federal Court after the Federal Police found messages exchanged between Cid and the blogger Allan dos Santos. In December of last year, the feds concluded that Cid, along with Bolsonaro, had committed a felony for spreading false information about the Covid-19. The Ajo Cid was also involved in the scandal of jewels given by the Government of Saudi Arabia to the then First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro’s right-hand man had personally committed himself to attempting to clear the jewels blocked at customs, using a Brazilian Air Force plane. In another investigation front, the Federal Police investigates to understand if Cid and other soldiers have managed a sort of “parallel bank” to pay the expenses of the former president and his family. The Bolsonaro clan denies the allegations. Among the messages found on Cid’s cell phone, the investigators found one in which the former major Barros claimed to know who ordered the murder of the city councilor Marielle Franco and the driver Anderson Gomes murdered by the ex soldiers, who later became militiamen , Ronnie Lessa and Elcio Queiroz, both identified by the investigators as the material executors of the atrocious murder.