Regional Court President Says Leaked Audios Cannot be Used to Free Lula

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Published this Sunday, September 15th, Judge Victor Luiz dos Santos Laus, presiding judge of the 4th Region Court of Appeals (TRF-4), declared in an interview with the BBC that the debate on the leaked dialogues of former judge and current Minister of Justice, Sérgio Moro, and prosecutors of the Lava Jato task force, published by The Intercept and other news outlets, “is a little out of focus”.

For the judge, the fact that the audios have been obtained by means of interception not authorized by the court system prevents even the beginning of verification on the case. “We have to be coherent in what we do. Any judge, when facing invalid evidence, everything that comes from it has no validity. In the Court, we reject several investigations derived from illicit evidence. In this case, we cannot even start an investigation because everything originates from illicit evidence, an invasion of privacy of those users of the Telegram application,” he maintains.

Also, he provokes: “The big question that should be asked to the citizen who did this is: and if it was your cell phone that was hacked, wouldn’t you be the first to say ‘You invaded my privacy, I want my security’…”?

The fact that participants in the dialogues affirmed that there is nothing illicit in the records and that a prosecutor made a public apology to Lula for comments she made regarding the death of former First Lady Marisa Letícia da Silva does not shake the conviction of the TRF-4 judge.

Fair trial of Lula

Asked about the statement of STF Justice Gilmar Mendes that “we owe Lula a fair trial,” Laus remembers that the magistrate himself participated in cases brought by the former president’s defense. “If, for one reason or another, he understood that the trial was not fair, it is a personal matter for him. But, in fact, several of the former president’s petitions reached the Supreme Court and were decided there”.

And he adds, “Going back to Justice Gilmar’s understanding that the former president would have had to have had a fair trial, if we’re going to work towards justice, we have to work in all areas. Is it fair to invade the privacy of a third party and, through this invasion, which is criminal, disclose the content of this same invasion? That is the question. It seems to me that the debate is ignoring an initial setback”.

According to the presiding judge of the TRF-4, Gilmar may be signaling that he has changed his mind. “Eventually, it is possible that the judges, over time, will change their understanding. Some evolve from a point of view; they start to see the controversy from a different point of view. Perhaps he is pointing in this direction: ‘Even though I have voted at another time in one way, I am now understanding the controversy from another angle’. Perhaps he is already announcing this. It’s the kind of question you have to ask him,” he says.

Source: Forum Magazine