Former President Luiz Inacio “Lula” Da Silva, historic leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), has been sentenced in a new case to an additional 12 years and 11 months in prison. Without producing any evidence, he is being accused of “passive corruption” for improvements carried out on a house in the country side that he does not own.
The offenses against Lula seem to be endless in this obscene mockery of the most elementary sense of justice.
On January 29, Genival Inacio Da Silva “Vavá”, Lula’s older brother and a beloved father figure, died. Lula was denied permission to attend the funeral, a right that every prisoner has in Brazil.
With cynicism and perversity, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) granted him a habeas corpus to guarantee him the “right to meet exclusively with his relatives,” but not in the place where the wake for his beloved brother was being held but rather in a regional Military Unit, even suggesting that they take the body to that unit. The permission came at the moment when Vavá was being buried. Lula commented that, “They did not let me say goodbye to Vavá out of pure evil.”
Lula’s original conviction of 12 years and 1 month of imprisonment came down on April 7, 2018, without a shred of evidence.
The Lula Institute indicated that “this new judicial decision came as the body of his brother was being buried in the Pauliceia Cemetery in Sao Bernardo do Campo, 20 km from Sao Paulo and 400 km from the Curitiba prison.”
Lula, 73, was nominated by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Argentina’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to receive the same award for having eradicated hunger from the map of Brazil in 2000. He became one of the world’s most prestigious political personalities because of his peaceful struggle for change. His crime was to remove more than 30 million Brazilians from extreme poverty and humiliation during his term in office.
The campaign of hatred and persecution against Lula is based on manipulation and lies. He is innocent and is a political prisoner of the Brazilian oligarchy under the tutelage of Washington.
The whole thing started with false and malicious stories in the media followed by a parliamentary and judicial coup that stripped Dilma Rousseff of power and continued with the judicial conspiracy to prevent Lula and the PT from returning to the presidency.
Judge Gabriela Hardt, who in the afternoon today handed down the new sentence, replaces Judge Moro, who was promoted to Minister of Justice by the government of far-right Jair Bolsonaro, as a reward for the illegal, immoral and ruthless persecution against the top leader of Brazil’s workers.
This April 7 will mark one year of the unjust imprisonment. We call on the international solidarity movement to multiply actions of denunciation and solidarity through all means of struggle all over the world for Lula’s freedom.
We feel the pain for his unjust imprisonment. We extend our unconditional solidarity to our dear comrade Lula for the loss of his brother, and his commitment to fight tirelessly for his freedom
#Fuerza Lula
#Lula Libre
International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity.
February 6, 2019
Source: International Committee for Peace Justice and Dignity