October 04, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  The same Brazilian prosecutors who for years exhibited a single-minded fixation on jailing former President Lula da Silva are now seeking his release from prison, requesting that a court allow him to serve the remainder of his 11-year sentence for corruption at home. But Lula — who believes the request is motivated by fear that prosecutorial and judicial improprieties in his case, which were revealed by the Intercept, will lead to the nullification of his conviction — is opposing these efforts, insisting that he will not leave prison until he receives full exoneration.

In seeking his release from prison, Lula’s prosecutors are almost certainly not motivated by humanitarian concerns. Quite the contrary: those prosecutors have often displayed a near-pathological hatred for the two-term ex-President. Last month, the Intercept, jointly with its reporting partner UOL, published previously secret Telegram messages in which the “Car Wash” prosecutors responsible for prosecuting Lula cruelly mocked the tragic death of his 7-year-old grandson from meningitis earlier this year, as well as the 2017 death of his wife of 43 years from a stroke at the age of 66. One of the prosecutors who participated publicly apologized, but none of the others has.

Far more likely is that the prosecutors are motivated by desperation to salvage their legacy after a series of defeats suffered by their once-untouchable, widely revered “Car Wash” investigation, ever since the Intercept, on June 9, began publishing reports based on a massive archive of secret chats between the prosecutors and Sergio Moro, the judge who oversaw most of the convictions, including Lula’s, and who now serves as President Bolsonaro’s Minister of Justice and Public Security.

The prosecutors’ cynical gambit, it appears, is that the country’s Supreme Court — which two weeks ago nullified one of Judge Moro’s anti-corruption convictions for the first time on the ground that he violated core rights of defendants — will feel less pressure to nullify Moro’s finding of guilt in Lula’s case if the ex-President is comfortably at home in São Paulo (albeit under house arrest) rather than lingering in a Curitiba prison.