The telenovela, which was taking on the contours of the civil war, was finally resolved: after a day of resistance, during which he barricaded himself in the headquarters of the metalworkers' union in Sao Paulo, "protected" by hundreds of militants while his lawyers tried the last attempt to avoid imprisonment, the former president of Brazil Lula, also a candidate in the next elections, decided to turn himself in: “I don't hide, I'm not afraid of them. I will respect their arrest warrant”said the 72-year-old involved in the Lava Jata judicial scandal, for which he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption.
Lula spoke after attending a mass in São Paulo in memory of his wife, who passed away exactly one year ago. During the commemoration, the former leader of the trade union movement, who had started his brilliant political career right from the headquarters where he has entrenched himself in recent days, is carried in triumph by the crowd, willing to do anything to defend him and avoid prison. Jail That Automatically Means Goodbye October Reelection Dreams: an eventuality that instead, according to the polls, would have been more than possible, although Lula has actually been out of the political scene since 2010 and has been involved in legal proceedings for many years which then also overwhelmed his dolphin Dilma Rousseff. However, Lula calmed the spirits, eventually accepting the verdict, without however failing to reaffirm his innocence. The former green-gold president has once again criticized the federal police and the Public minister claiming that "they lied, I don't forgive them for passing on to society the idea that I am a thief".
The judge Sergio Moro – who issued the arrest warrant against him – had granted him 17 hours to hand himself over to the authorities, thus allowing him to attend mass. Meanwhile the magistrate of the Brazilian Supreme Federal Tribunal, Edson Fachin, rejected the new request to block the former president's prison. The request was presented on Friday by Lula's lawyers. This was reported by the Folha de San Paulo newspaper.
