Brazil's Lula files habeas corpus to avoid prison sentence

BRASILIA, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- The defense team of former Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, presented a motion of habeas corpus to the Supreme Court (TSJ) to prevent Lula from being arrested.

Last week, a federal appeals court rejected Lula's appeal against a 12 year and one month prison sentence for his involvement in the Petrobras corruption ring. Petrobras is a semi-public Brazilian multinational corporation in the petroleum industry.

In the motion presented to the TSJ on Tuesday, Lula's lawyers argued that the confirmation of the sentence had violated the Constitution, saying that nobody can be sentenced to prison by this level of court.

The defense filed a petition, saying that the Brazilian penal code only allows an appeals court to condemn people to "preventive prison" and that prison is a final recourse after the appeals process is done.

However, this same defense was filed in 2016, when most justices agreed that the sentence could be carried out after the appeals court ruled on it.

At the time, the TSJ had decided that, after this stage, there would be no more doubts about the facts and evidence of a penal process.

Lula was condemned on appeal last Wednesday for the crimes of passive corruption and money laundering, in which he received a luxury apartment in the city of Guaruja, near Sao Paulo, from the construction company OAS, in exchange for favoring the firm with public Petrobras contracts.

The defense denies the accusations, stating that the property had always belonged to OAS and that Lula was condemned without evidence. Enditem