Five Hundred Days of Injustice: On the Imprisonment of Luiz Incio Lula da Silva

[Judi Lynn]

September 24, 2019 Celso Amorim



For normalcy to return to Brazil and for hope to be recovered, Lula’s freedom—along with annulment of the faulty process by which he was condemned—is essential.

By Celso Amorim

On April 7th last year, Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was arrested in a São Paulo suburb and taken to Federal Police offices in the southern town of Curitiba. It was the culmination of a campaign, waged jointly by the mainstream media and part of the judiciary, that had begun two years earlier with a series of maneuvers that led to the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff. The underlying objective, in both cases, was to roll back a progressive political project; one repeatedly endorsed by voters and that focused on bringing greater justice and equality to Brazilian society.

In May 2018, in what was widely understood as a reference to these events, Pope Francis spoke of a new form of “coup d ́État.” Later, as he addressed magistrates from all over the Americas, the Pope spoke of the danger that “lawfare” poses to democracy.

The trial leading to Lula’s imprisonment was acutely flawed from the beginning. The sentence given by Judge Sergio Moro states Lula was convicted for “undetermined acts” related to an infamous São Paulo beach condominium, without proof that Lula benefited from any sort of illicit exchange. In fact, all available evidence demonstrates that the apartment never belonged to Lula or anyone in his family.

“Given the credibility he has among the great majority of the population, only Lula can reestablish dialogue among all sectors of society, which is indispensable for Brazil to return to a path of peace and development.”

The power of the media campaign against Lula, and the naive worshipping of the fight against corruption by any means, sowed doubts in the minds of even the most skeptical individuals. But this began to change with the appointment of Judge Moro as minister of justice under current president Jair Bolsonaro—a move widely seen as a reward for Moro keeping Lula, the top-polling candidate, from participating in last year’s presidential election. This was followed by revelations in The Intercept proving what careful observers already knew: Lula was the object of political persecution, conducted by a biased judge and fanatical prosecutors obsessed with their personal project to amass power.

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