Lula, closer to freedom | They have reduced the pe …

From Brasilia. The Superior Court of Justice has partially accepted the appeal by the former president to reduce from four to three months the sentence for which he is jailed since April 's. last year in Curitiba, in southern Brazil.

Three of the five members of this court of the third instance agreed that the court should apply a sentence of eight years and ten months, which would allow it to recover a partial freedom in September.

This was the first victory of the leader of the Workers' Party since his conviction in 2007 by the then judge Sergio Moro, mentor of the mega Jausa Lava Jato.

Therefore, the decision of the Superior Court of Justice, known shortly before 5:30 pm on Tuesday in Brasilia, is a setback for Moro, nicknamed the "substitute" justice of the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

Magistrates Felix Fischer, rapporteur of the case, Jorge Mussi and Reinaldo Soares da Fonseca agreed to amend the sentence during the session of the Fifth Chamber of the Superior Court.

Although the session continued, it was impossible to overturn the majority which corrected the sentences handed down against Moro in the first instance and the Federal Regional Court 4 in the second instance.

In particular, the defense relied on the total nullity of the sentence to which they attribute defects of origin, for example on the basis of statements of repentance instead of reliable evidence.

In his now-revised conviction, Moro considered that the accused was the owner of an apartment in the seaside resort of Guarujá, recognizing himself that he had not spent a night in the building of which he had never had title deed.

The lack of evidence worsened in 2018, when new documents confirmed that the former president was not the owner of the department, which had been handed over. guaranteed by a construction company.