Above Photo:Â The lawyers announced that they will send the case to the Committee of Human Rights of the United Nations. | Photo: EFE
Lula has been in prison since April 7, 2018, over corruption charges that media leaks and legal experts have exposed as politically motivated.
New private messages exchanged between the Lava Jato (Car Wash) prosecutors involved in the judicial case against former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were published Monday by his defense attorney, giving more evidence that the leader of the Workers Party was “victim of a conspiracy.”
“The messages are directly related with the two clearly corrupted procedures that were initiated in the Federal Court of Curitiba (the Triplex and Sitio case) and inflicted unfair sentenced to Lula,” said his lawyers Valeska Texeira Martins and Cristiano Zanin Martins in a press release.
The then-judge Sergio Moro, now Super Minister of Justice, admitted that Lula received no funds from the construction company Odebrecht, still the corruption case known as Lava Jato, “did not take into account the evidence of his testimony that we brought to the procedure,” they added.
As a result, the lawyers announced that they will send the case to the Committee of Human Rights of the United Nations in order to annul the sentences against Lula and to open an investigation about the role of the public officials involved in the conversations.
The historical leader of the Brazilian left has been in prison since April 7, 2018, over corruption charges that media leaks and legal experts have exposed as politically motivated.
Lula ran for president last year but was blocked from appearing on the ballot by Moro, which was upheld on appeal. Lula led opinion polls heading into the election, which was won by far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro.
Some excerpted conversations published showed prosecutors discussing how to block journalists from interviewing Lula in jail during last year’s campaign. A message attributed to one of the prosecutors, Laura Tessler, suggested that such an interview could help Lula’s stand-in on the Workers Party ticket.
On June 25, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court rejected two appeals that attempted to grant freedom to the former president. The third motion, which was the Habeas Corpus hearing initiated on December 2018, was suspended once again and rescheduled for this year’s second semester.