Moraes releases former Bolsonaro minister suspected of plotting Mauro Cid's escape

Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), ordered the release of former Minister of Tourism Gilson Machado, who had been preventively arrested on the morning of Friday, the 13th, under suspicion of helping Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid flee the country.

According to the Federal Police and the Attorney General's Office (PGR), Machado tried to obtain a Portuguese passport for the lieutenant colonel, former aide-de-camp to former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), to leave Brazil. Agents searched Cid's home in Brasília on Friday.

According to Moraes, 'with the efforts carried out by the Federal Police, preventive detention is no longer necessary and can be replaced by alternative precautionary measures'.

Last Wednesday, the 11th, an independent investigation was opened to verify whether former minister Gilson Machado acted to obtain a Portuguese passport for Mauro Cid. The investigation is being conducted in secret at the STF, also under the leadership of Moraes.

When the information became public, the former minister denied the accusations and claimed that he only contacted the Portuguese consulate in May to help his father, Carlos Eduardo Machado Guimarães, renew his passport.

According to a statement from the Attorney General's Office to the STF, there is a “strong possibility” that he tried to help the former aide-de-camp to plan an escape, “given the proximity of the end of the procedural investigation” of the criminal action of the coup plot, in which Cid is one of the defendants.