Mercenary Leader Visits Bolsonaro Aide in Jail
Why would a former Brazilian intel chief and mercenary company owner visit a key suspect in the January 8 coup attempt in prison?
General Roberto Escoto
On Tuesday, July 11, Jair Bolsonaro’s former personal assistant, Lt. Colonel Mauro Cid took the stand in Brazil’s ongoing mixed parliamentary investigation into the January 8th coup attempt.
Cid was questioned for over 7 hours . After a brief explanation of his duties as the President’s personal assistant, he exercised his right to remain silent. His justification for this, he said, was to avoid incriminating himself in the 8 investigations currently underway against him for crimes ranging from operating a payroll kickback to falsifying Covid 19 vaccination data for officials traveling to the US, to conspiring to overthrow the democratically elected government of Brazil.
It was this last charge that brought Cid to the stand. After Federal Police confiscated the two telephones he used to communicate messages back and forth with the President, they discovered conversations in which Colonel Jean Lawand Junior implored him to ask Bolsonaro to declare a state of siege during the final weeks of his time in office, which would effectively transfer control of the country to the Army. They also discovered a detailed plan for executing a coup on January 8. As supporters of ex-President Bolsonaro invaded the capitol, Congress and Supreme Court buildings, and as power lines were blown up in strategic places around the country, President Lula would get nervous and declare a state of emergency. At this moment, the Army would take over national security, arrest Supreme Court President Alexandre de Moraes and President Lula and announce new elections.
President Lula, who has vast experience dealing with the Brazilian military dating back from his union days in the 1970s, didn’t call a state of emergency on Jan. 8, but various reports dating from September 2022 indicate that the Army leadership was not on board with the idea anyway. Jan 8 appears to have been supported by a right wing extremist group within the armed forces that has its roots in the military dictatorship. Led by alumnae of Agulhas Negras military academy (Bolsonaro’s alma mater) the group has evolved from a dictatorship era hardline faction called the Tigrada, whose membership back in the day is rumoured to have included General Augusto Heleno.
The fact that Cid refused to answer any questions meant that each member of the Committee had a full 10 minutes to say whatever they wanted about the case. This provided for an entertaining 8 hours of reality-style TV, with pandemonium occasionally breaking out as different lawmakers used formal Portuguese to insult their rivals with angry yells that, due to parliamentary protocol, have to always begin with, “your excellency”.
Investigation rapporteur Senator Eliziane Gama from the center-right PSD party, in the elegant Portuguese typical of residents of her home state of Maranhao, read Cid a list of people who have visited him in prison since his arrest on May 3.
Among those mentioned was the owner of the mercenary company Áquila International, retired Major-General Manuel Escoto.
Escoto, who’s company, among other things, recruited ex-soldiers from Brazil’s special forces to operate in the Central African Republic, has a resume that includes serving under General Augusto Heleno during the Minustah occupation of Haiti in 2004 and 2005, commanding the Brazilian Army’s mission in the United States, and serving as Chief of Army Intelligence. Like Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro and most of the far right operatives around the former President, Escoto graduated from the Agulhas Negras military academy.
In 2019, the Bolsonaro administration appointed Escoto to direct APEX, the Federal Government’s foreign commerce department. At the time, many journalists questioned what message Brazil was sending internationally by appointing the owner of a mercenary company to oversee international trade deals.
Escoto, who allegedly used a human skull with a red beret on it as a paperweight while directing APEX, has the trappings of someone ideologically aligned with the Tigradas.
Why did the founder of Brazil’s first mercenary company visit a key suspect in the January 8 coup attempt in prison? Was it a mere social visit, or was it damage control? Did the business elites who bankrolled the coup attempt try to hire mercenaries? Hopefully more information about this will come out as the various investigations move forwards.
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