The former president of Brazil Lula will be released from prison within a few hours, at most days. In fact, his lawyers are about to take advantage of yesterday's decision of the Federal Supreme Court, the highest legal authority in Brazil, which reconsidered and overturned its 2016 verdict, when it decided - to prevent the politicians involved in the Lava Jato scandal from got away with it thanks to the statute of limitations - that you had to start serving your sentence right from the appeal. Now, however, we return to the past and to the same rule that applies in Italy after a sentence by the Cassation: each convict will serve his sentence in prison only when the last level of judgment has been completed.
And therefore Lula, who is serving in the Curitiba penitentiary a sentence of 12 years and one month for money laundering and conspiracy to commit corruption, received however only - for now - on appeal, will be released, as well as the other thousands of defendants detained in the same conditions. Among other things, Lula has an appeal pending before the Superior Court of Justice and another before the Superior Electoral Court: the prosecutors of Lava Jato, already two weeks ago, had already expressed a favorable opinion on the release of the leader of the Partido dos Trabalhiadores, but in regime conditional release, i.e. at home with the anklet.
Now, however, the situation has changed: immediately, as soon as the appeal is formally approved, Lula will be completely free, awaiting the final judgment on a judicial case that has divided Brazil in half for years and which in recent months has been enriched with disturbing background stories, which would probably see the magistrate who was head of the Lava Jato pool (the "Di Pietro" of Brazil…), today not by chance super minister of Justice with Bolsonaro, directly involved in directing investigations and the trial.
The news immediately sparked the enthusiasm of the former president's supporters, who are still many in Brazil, as well as his detractors. Great support also from the other South American leaders of the same political area: among the first to congratulate the new president-elect of Argentina, the Peronist Alberto Fernandez, on social networks. The liberation of a figure like Lula it comes at a time of great tension on the Latin American continent, marked in recent weeks by violent street protests first in Ecuador and then in Chile, as well as by early elections in Peru and the disputed re-election of Evo Morales in Bolivia.
