19/05/2024 – 12:04
Former special advisor for International Affairs to former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), Filipe Martins says he considers himself a “political prisoner”. He had a new request for release denied by the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes on the 10th.
“After 100 days it doesn’t surprise me. This maintenance only further explains something that, for me and my defense, was already clear from the beginning: the reasons for my arrest were not legal, but political. I’m a political prisoner,” said Martins, in a note sent by his defense to Estadão this Sunday, 19th.
Martins has been in pre-trial detention since February 8, when he was the target of operation Tempus Veritatis. The former advisor is identified by the Federal Police (PF) as a member of the “legal core” of the group that attempted to carry out a coup d’état after the 2022 elections.
“If due legal process had been observed, I would not even have been arrested, much less I would have remained imprisoned for so many days, even with so much evidence in favor of my release”, he stated via the defense, who learned of the new decision on Wednesday, 15.
In a statement, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, former aide-de-camp of the Presidency, said that Martins was responsible for delivering to Bolsonaro a “draft of the coup”, which provided for the arrest of authorities and the calling of a new presidential election. The case placed the former advisor among the PF’s targets. He denies having any involvement with the document.
“We had seven petitions and evidence solemnly ignored by Mr. Minister Alexandre de Moraes. He doesn’t even refer to them in his dispatches asking for endless diligence (of course, as he is trying to prove something that didn’t happen),” lawyer Ricardo Fernandes, responsible for Martins’ defense, told Estadão.
When requesting preventive detention, the PF reported that Martins’ name was on the list of passengers who traveled to Orlando aboard the presidential plane on December 30, 2022. The defense denied that he left Brazil and presented as an argument the fact that Martins is not on the flight’s passenger list, obtained via the Access to Information Law with the Institutional Security Office in 2023.
The defense also presented Latam airline tickets from Brasília to Curitiba on December 31, to argue that Martins remained in Brazil. The former advisor would have gone to Ponta Grossa (PR), where he stayed at his father-in-law’s house, where he was arrested.
Moraes asked the airline Latam and the concessionaire that manages Brasília airport to inform whether he traveled to the United States and to present security images.
As shown by Estadão, investigators located, in the database of the United States Department of Homeland Security (Department of Homeland Security, in English), a record of the advisor’s entry into American territory, on December 30, 2022, with a passport common.
The Attorney General’s Office (PGR), which had defended Martins’ release, requested additional steps to make it clear whether the advisor left Brazil or not. “The information provided by Filipe Garcia Martins Pereira’s defense and the Federal Police are contradictory and, therefore, incompatible”, says the PGR opinion.
Martins is in the Penal Medical Complex (CMP), in Pinhais (PR), which became known as the Operation Lava Jato prison. His defense denies any intention to negotiate a plea bargain.
Filipe Garcia Martins, former special advisor to the Presidency of the Republic for International Affairs, is also responding in court to an accusation by the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) that he made a gesture allegedly linked to white supremacist groups. He had been acquitted, but, in November 2023, the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF-1) overturned the decision.
Martins accompanied Ernesto Araújo, then Minister of Foreign Relations, in a session of the Federal Senate on March 24, 2021. On that occasion, he made a sign with his hand that is usually made by white supremacists in the United States – he put his thumb and index finger together, and stretched out the other three fingers forming an imitation of the letters W and P, the acronym for the racist motto White Power. The gesture was broadcast on TV Senado. The former advisor claimed to be fixing the lapels of his suit, but the Senate’s expertise refuted the claim.
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