BRAZIL: Ex-President Rouseff fights against imprisonment of another former leader Lula

Former Brazil President Dilma Rousseff has kicked-off an international solidarity campaign in Spain to protest the imprisonment of her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Rousseff while addressing a conference in Spain’s capital, Madrid, on Tuesday called for “international solidarity” and denounced what she described as a politically-motivated decision to jail the leftist politician by the country’s right-wing ahead of presidential elections.

“Democracy in Brazil is at risk” because of a “parliamentary coup”, she said at Casa de America, a consortium created by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to strengthen ties between Spain and the Americas.

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An embattled Lula who has now began serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption finally turned himself in to local police after initially defying for some 24 hours a court deadline to submit himself to police.

Lula, 72, finally handed himself over to police to begin a 12-year prison sentence for corruption after he left the steel-workers union building where he had sought refuge.

After turning himself in to police, the former leader was taken away from the premises in an industrial suburb of Sao Paulo in a convoy of black police cars, Globo TV reported.

 

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