{"id":2977,"date":"2018-03-23T20:27:47","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T20:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/?p=2977"},"modified":"2018-03-23T20:27:57","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T20:27:57","slug":"brazil-top-court-delays-decision-on-blocking-prison-for-lula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/?p=2977","title":{"rendered":"Brazil top court delays decision on blocking prison for Lula"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brazil\u2019s Supreme Court on Thursday suspended its hearing of a plea from leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that he not be sent to prison for a corruption conviction until he exhausts all possible appeals.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">The court said it would restart debate on Lula\u2019s case on\u00a0April 4, its next session.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">The justices ruled that until they make a final judgment, Lula cannot be jailed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">In January, an appeals court upheld Lula\u2019s conviction on taking bribes and money laundering and sentenced him to more than 12 years in prison.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Next Monday, that same court is expected to rule on the final procedural appeals by Lula\u2019s legal team.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">If it rejects them, under Brazilian law Lula would then be eligible to begin serving his sentence, but that cannot happen until the Supreme Court finalises its ruling in early April.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lula, Brazil\u2019s first working-class leader, remains the most popular politician in Latin America\u2019s biggest nation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">He oversaw years of robust growth and falling inequality during a commodity boom last decade, and has said he wants to run again for the presidency in October.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lula leads all early polls.<strong><em>\/Reuters<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brazil\u2019s Supreme Court on Thursday suspended its hearing of a plea from leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that he not be sent to prison for a corruption conviction until he exhausts all possible appeals. The court said it would restart debate on Lula\u2019s case on\u00a0April 4, its next session. The justices ruled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2980,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977\/revisions\/2980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}