Sao Paulo (Brazil): Pele's son has been freed after six months in prison awaiting trial on drug-related charges.
Brazil's Supreme Court ordered Edson Cholbi Nascimento's release on Saturday pending his trial, which hasn't been scheduled yet, after his lawyers filed a petition late on Friday.
He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. A former professional soccer player known as Edinho, Nascimento was one of 50 people arrested on June 6 in a sting to dismantle a drug gang operating in and around the port of Santos, 80 kilometres east of Sao Paulo.
Nascimento, 35, issued a statement shortly after his arrest saying he was a drug user, but not a trafficker. He said he began using drugs out of curiosity after he quit professional soccer in 1999, and added he regretted having set a bad example.
Nascimento's lawyer, Sidney Goncalves, told the Folha de S Paulo newspaper on saturday that Pele "was emotionally moved" by the news that his son was being freed.
Nascimento, who was at the Tremembe Prison Complex in the interior of Sao Paulo state, was a second-string goalkeeper for eight years at Santos, his father's former club.
Nascimento was convicted of vehicular homicide in 1999 for taking part in a car race on a city street that killed a motorcyclist seven years earlier.
He was sentenced to six years in a work-release programme, but the sentence was never served because he appealed the ruling and was acquitted in a new trial.
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