Brazil violated ex-president Lula’s rights – UN — Analysis

A conviction for corruption that barred Lula from seeking another term in office was invalidated last year by Brazil’s top court
Brazilian authorities violated former President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva’s due-process rights during a corruption case that later barred him from seeking a third term in office, a UN panel has ruled.
Lula, a prominent left-wing politician known for his political views, claims that his conviction was politically motivated. It was meant to stop him running in elections.
“Although the Supreme Federal Court vacated Lula’s conviction and imprisonment in 2021, these decisions were not timely and effective enough to avoid or redress the violations,”Arif Bulkan was a UN Human Rights Committee Member.
Between 2003 and 2010, Lula was Brazil’s president. He won two elections easily and left the office with an approval rating at 80%. In 2017, he was sentenced to nine years in prison after being convicted of corruption and money laundering amid Operation Car Wash, one of the biggest corruption investigations in Brazil’s history.
Later, that sentence was increased to twelve years. This effectively prevented Lula de facto from running in the 2018 Presidential Election, where he was the frontrunner.

Three years later, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court annulled Lula’s conviction, ruling that former judge Sergio Moro, who oversaw the investigation against Lula and was later appointed justice minister, had no jurisdiction to investigate and try the case and could not be considered to have been impartial.
On Thursday, the UN panel confirmed that Moro had violated Lula’s right to privacy when he approved the request to tap the leader’s phone, the phones of his family and that of his lawyer, and then released the content of the wiretaps to the media before formally charging Lula with a crime. A warrant for Lula’s detention was also leaked to media.
“The UN decision yesterday showed the shameful actions that were done to prevent me from becoming the president of the republic,” Lula tweeted in response to the UN’s ruling. “I don’t have to prove anything. Those who have invented lies against me have to prove it.”
Operation Car Wash began in 2014 after Lula’s resignation. This investigation was originally launched to investigate corruption at Petrobras (state-run oil company), but it was extended later to cover more corrupt practices in higher echelons.
The ensuing scandal led to the impeachment of Lula’s successor Dilma Rousseff in 2016. Elle also refuted all accusations, calling herself an a. “victim of a coup.”
Lula said to RT 2018 that there wasn’t “a conspiracy in Brazil between the media, the judiciary, the prosecution service and police”They are against him.
Investigative website The Intercept released a trove of documents in 2019, which appeared to show that Moro had broken the country’s judicial code of ethics by providing advice and tips to lead Car Wash prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol. Moro claimed that the messages were not in context and there wasn’t. “no sign of any abnormality or directing of actions as a magistrate.”
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