Lula is finally out of jail — although, as both Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn made clear yesterday, he should have never been there in the first place. It has become increasingly evident that Lula never had a fair trial. He was, in fact, a political prisoner — a victim of lawfare: the manipulation of judicial institutions for politically motivated persecution.

Since Lula’s imprisonment, documents released by Glenn Greenwald and the Intercept have shown that the judge and prosecutors were colluding, constructing the case together, and calculating their actions for maximum mediatic and political impact. The messages show the then-judge Sérgio Moro — now minister of justice in the extreme right-wing government of Jair Bolsonaro — instructing and advising the prosecution, at the same that he was publicly pretending to be a neutral and technical arbiter.

It is now clear, as former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa has recently stated in an interview to Jacobin: “if [Lula] hadn’t been jailed, he would be president of Brazil, but instead we have the fascist Jair Bolsonaro as president, and the judge who jailed Lula is a minister.” Armed with this new information, Lula is now waging a judicial battle to annul the whole trial, as Sérgio Moro could not be regarded as an impartial judge.