UN panel rules Brazil court violated Lula’s rights

The prosecution of Brazilian ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on corruption allegations breached his right to an impartial trial, according to the UN Human Rights Committee.

The judgment by the Geneva expert panel came as a triumph for the communist leader, who was imprisoned from April 2018 to November 2019, just as he prepares to run for president in this year’s elections.

“The investigation and prosecution of former President Lula da Silva violated his right to be tried by an impartial tribunal, his right to privacy and his political rights,” the committee said in a statement.

The decision by the 18-member panel is non-binding, but was closely watched in a Brazil still divided over “Operation Car Wash,” the anti-corruption probe that ensnared Lula and exposed a massive graft scheme with tentacles around the political system, business world and state oil company Petrobras.

The committee concluded the lead judge in the investigation, Sergio Moro, showed bias in his handling of Lula’s case.

That included violating Lula’s right to be presumed innocent by leaking wiretapped phone calls of the ex-president to the media, it said.

Lula, who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, left office as the most popular president in Brazilian history, but fell spectacularly from grace when the Car Wash investigation exploded.

Moro sentenced Lula to nine years in 2017 for bribe-taking, and an appeals court increased the sentence to 12 years in 2018, sidelining Lula from that year’s presidential elections.

The Supreme Court annulled Lula’s convictions last year on procedural grounds, finding Moro had not been impartial.

That cleared the charismatic ex-steelworker to run for president again, setting up an election showdown this October between him and far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula has always claimed he is innocent.

His legal team, which brought the case, hailed the committee’s “historic decision.”

Moro, who later became Bolsonaro’s justice minister until stepping down in 2020, claimed he hadn’t seen the whole report.

However, in a statement emailed to AFP, the ex-judge, who is also considering a presidential bid this year, stated that Lula “was convicted of corruption in three proceedings, at the hands of nine different judges.”