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Lula in police custody in Brazil after tense standoff with supporters Lula begins prison sentence in Brazil after giving himself up to police
(about 5 hours later)
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is in police custody after a tense showdown with supporters who tried to block him leaving a union building. Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has handed himself in to police after spending two nights at the metalworkers’ union headquarters in São Paulo in defiance of an arrest warrant.
Da Silva left an exit of a metal workers union surrounded by several bodyguards who pushed back supporters trying to prevent him from leaving. Getting beyond them, da Silva entered a police vehicle in a convoy of cars. He is expected to be transferred to the city of Curitiba in the neighbouring state. “I’m going to prove my innocence,” Lula told a large crowd of adoring supporters on Saturday at the building where he began his political career. “Do what you want, the powerful can kill one, two or 100 roses. But they’ll never manage to stop the arrival of spring.”
Lula, convicted of corruption, had said earlier on Saturday he would turn himself in to police, a day after defying a judge’s order to start serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption that derails his effort to return to power this year. His supporters then blockaded the building to prevent him from leaving. Afterwards, he was carried on the shoulders of supporters shouting “Free Lula!” before being flown to the southern city of Curitiba where he will begin serving a 12-year sentence for corruption.
In a fiery speech to a crowd of red-shirted supporters outside a steelworkers union headquarters, Brazil’s first working-class president had this week insisted on his innocence and called his bribery conviction a political crime, but relented after a nearly 24-hour standoff with authorities. Military police in Curitiba were later forced to disperse Lula supporters with rubber bullets and tear gas when he arrived at a police station in the city.
“I will comply with the order and all of you will become Lula,” he had told the cheering crowd. “I’m not above the law. If I didn’t believe in the law, I wouldn’t have started a political party. I would have started a revolution.” Although the 72-year-old will appeal the conviction and is unlikely to serve the whole sentence, his imprisonment has for now ended his hopes of regaining the presidency in October’s elections. A final decision on his eligibility will be made by the electoral court.
His imprisonment would remove the most influential figure from Brazil’s political scene, and the frontrunner of this year’s presidential campaign, scrambling a wide-open race and strengthening the odds of a more centrist candidate prevailing, according to analysts and political foes. Thousands of supporters, many from unions and leftwing social movements, had for two days formed a human shield around the union building in the São Bernardo do Campo district of the city to prevent Lula from handing himself in.
It also marks the unmistakable end of an era for Brazil’s left, which has been out in force in the streets outside the union headquarters in metropolitan São Paulo where Lula huddled with aides and allies while police awaited his surrender. “He managed to transform the moment of his imprisonment into a demonstration of his political force and popular support, not humiliation,” said Maurício Santoro, a political scientist and professor of international relations at Rio de Janeiro’s State University.
He was convicted of taking bribes, including renovation of a three-storey seaside apartment that he denies ever owning, by an engineering firm in return for help landing public contracts. Despite the show of strength, Lula’s supporters say his arrest is a blow to the political project for a more socially just and inclusive Brazil that the former president pioneered with his worker’s party government.
“I’m the only person being prosecuted over an apartment that isn’t mine,” insisted Lula, standing on a platform alongside his impeached successor Dilma Rousseff and leaders of other leftwing parties. “Brazil’s powerful don’t want a popular government that rules for the people,” said Maria Osmarina, 50, a teacher who was present during Lula’s speech.
A Brazilian supreme court justice on Saturday rejected the latest plea by Lula’s legal team, which argued they had not exhausted procedural appeals when a judge issued the order to turn himself in. One of the issues inflaming the debate is that Lula’s case was judged much more quickly than all other cases in the huge Car Wash graft scandal, as well as the fact that other politicians from rival parties accused of more serious crimes remain free.
Under Brazilian electoral law, a candidate is forbidden from running for office for eight years after being found guilty of a crime. Rare exceptions have been made in the past, and the final decision would be made by the highest electoral court if and when Lula officially files to be a candidate. Michel Temer, who took over as president from Lula’s successor Dilma Rousseff in a controversial impeachment, survived two trials for corruption-related charges last year mainly because he was shielded by allies in congress.
The union where Lula, 72, sought refuge served as the launchpad for his career nearly four decades ago, when he led nationwide strikes that helped to end Brazil’s 20-year military dictatorship. It is the second time Lula has been jailed; the first was during Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1980 for organising large strikes that were important to weakening the regime’s grip on power.
His everyman style and unvarnished speeches electrified masses and eventually won him two terms as president, from 2003 to 2011, when he oversaw robust economic growth and falling inequality amid a commodities boom. This time, prosecutors say he received a $2.2m real (£470,000) beachfront apartment in the multimillion-dollar Car Wash graft scheme to help construction company OAS win contracts with state oil firm Petrobras.
His defence team has taken the case to the United Nations human rights commission. They say the prosecution was plagued by unethical methods and lack of material proof.
With Lula out of the elections, far-right former army captain and Brazil’s military dictatorship enthusiast Jair Bolsonaro leads, though polls suggest that he would lose to more moderate left- and rightwing candidates in the runoff.
Luiz Inácio Lula da SilvaLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva
BrazilBrazil
AmericasAmericas
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