The lower house of Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s lawyers may have access to material that could cast doubt on the two convictions he received for alleged corruption.
The decision was taken by four votes to one and gives Lula’s defense access to a series of messages prosecutors of the anti-corruption operation Lava Jato exchanged at the time with then-Judge Sergio Moro, who convicted the former president in two separate cases. to sentences of nearly 25 years in prison.
“The content is extremely serious” and could reveal that there was “an inappropriate association between the trial body and the prosecution,” said Magistrate Ricardo Lewandoski, instructor of the case, in a clear allusion to Moro and the prosecutors.
These messages, obtained by hackers and delivered in part to the Intercept portal, suggest that in those trials where Lula was eventually found guilty of corruption, Judge Moro somehow directed and even coordinated the prosecution’s action and investigation. strictly prohibited by law.
The hackers, who had cloned Moro’s phones, some prosecutors and even government agencies, were arrested and the material seized by police, who did not provide the contents to the former president’s lawyers.
Lula’s defense argues that these messages “ prove ” that the trials led by Moro, both at first instance and with rulings upheld by higher courts, were neither “ transparent ” nor “ impartial, ” for which they already have numerous invalidity requests. filed with the Supreme Court.
The former president, who ruled between 2003 and 2011, has spent a year and seven months in prison and was released by a Supreme Court decision that a convicted person cannot go to prison until that highest court confirms the sentences. , which has not happened in any of the cases.
Lula’s defense thesis confirms that Moro condemned him without any evidence with the intent of avoiding his candidacy for the 2018 presidential election, which was ultimately won by current far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, while the leader of the progressive camp was in prison.
The former president’s lawyers reinforce this idea with the fact that as soon as Bolsonaro won the election, Moro resigned from the magistracy and accepted the position of Justice Minister in the new government.
However, in April last year, Moro resigned from enmity with Bolsonaro, who he even accused of attempting to interfere illegally and politically with the federal police and of betraying his promise to continue the fight against corruption.
Lula’s lawyers are now confident that those conversations between Moro and prosecutors, mostly over messaging networks, will reinforce the request for annulment of the trials, and thus of the verdicts, which they have already submitted to the Supreme Court.
However, according to prosecutors, the content of these messages was obtained illegally by hackers and there is no guarantee that it was not “manipulated” by the hackers themselves so that it could not be used as a test.
However, this matter must be resolved by the full session of the Supreme Court, which has not yet determined when it will examine the annulment petition that Lula’s defense has brought against the trials led by then-Judge Sergio Moro.