Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forumBrazilian prosecutors who indicted Lula da Silva schemed to prevent his party from winning
An enormous trove of secret documents reveals that Brazils most powerful prosecutors, who have spent years insisting they are apolitical, instead plotted to prevent the Workers Party, or PT, from winning the 2018 presidential election.
The massive archive, provided exclusively to The Intercept, shows multiple examples of politicized abuse of prosecutorial powers by those who led the countrys sweeping Operation Car Wash corruption probe since 2014.
It also reveals a long-denied political and ideological agenda.
One glaring example occurred 10 days before the first round of presidential voting last year, when a Supreme Court justice granted a petition from the countrys largest newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, to interview former President Luiz Inácio 'Lula' da Silva, who was in prison on corruption charges brought by the Car Wash task force.
Immediately upon learning of that decision on September 28, 2018, the team of prosecutors in the case who had vehemently denied being driven by political motives began discussing in a private Telegram chat group how to undermine the Supreme Court decision, and thus block a pre-election interview.
The Car Wash prosecutors explicitly said that their motive in stopping Lulas interview was to prevent the PT from winning.
A press conference before the second round of voting could help elect Haddad, prosecutor Laura Tessler wrote in the chat group, referring to the PTs candidate Fernando Haddad.
The chief of the prosecutor task force, Deltan Dallagnol, and another prosecutor agreed to pray together that the events of that day would not usher in the PTs return to power.
Haddad replaced Lula after the latter was banned from running, thus paving the way for far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro. Polls showed Lula winning handily, had he been allowed to run.
The former president was convicted in April 2018, just as Brazil's campaign season got underway. Lacking material evidence, his conviction was based solely on testimony from jailed contractors.
The apartment Lula was alleged without proof to have received from a contractor by way of a bribe, was put on the market by its real owner last week.
The judge who oversaw the case, Sérgio Moro, was appointed Minister of Justice by President Bolsonaro.
At: https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-car-wash-prosecutors-workers-party-lula/
Former Brazilian President Lula da Silva, arguably his country's most prominent political prisoner, during his April 26 interview - the first he's been allowed to give since his imprisonment a year ago.
What's App and Telegram messages published by The Intercept show that political motives governed prosecutors' actions.
Convicted last year solely on testimony from a contractor kept in a rat-infested dungeon until he incriminated him, the UN considers his detention arbitrary.
Kurt V.
(5,624 posts)sandensea
(21,530 posts)Something similar to Lula's case is taking place in neighboring Argentina, where the neo-con Macri administration has been trying to throw Macri's most visible opponent, former President Cristina Kirchner in jail on similar grounds.
And like Lula's case, no evidence against Mrs. Kirchner has emerged, which of course hasn't stopped them from concocting some.
The most egregious is probably the "notebooks" kept by a former Public Works Ministry chauffeur detailing large campaign contributions (and, it's inferred, personal payoffs) in cash.
The problem: the "notebooks" have never been produced. Merely photocopies - which as you know are not admissible, since they could be from anything.
Indeed, the judge in the case (a political operative, like Brazil's Sérgio Moro) refuses to subject them to a handwriting and diction analysis (they read nothing like the way the man speaks).
There's reason to believe Macri's doing all this at Elliot Abrams' (and Cheeto's) behest. It wouldn't be surprising.