Lula backs down and affirms that it will be Justice and not his Government that will decide on Putin’s arrest in Brazil

2023-09-11 11:41:55

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. – Europa Press/Contact/Ricardo Stuckert/Brazil Pres

Follow live the latest news about the war in Ukraine

MADRID, 11 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, qualified this Monday his statements from the weekend and stated that it is up to the judiciary and not his government to make the decision whether or not to arrest his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, if Next year he will go to Rio de Janeiro for the G20 summit.

“The one who decides that is the Justice, it is not the Government, nor the Parliament. It is the Justice that makes that decision,” said the Brazilian president, who on Saturday stated that as long as he was president Putin would not be arrested in Brazil.

Putin is under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine in relation to the forced transfer to Russia of hundreds of minors.

Brazil, as a signatory state of the Rome Statute, would be under the obligation to arrest you if you are in its territory. In that sense, Lula has assured that he was unaware of the existence of that court and has wondered why his country has joined it and others such as the United States, China, or India have not.

“I’m not saying that we are going to leave (…) I didn’t even know about the existence of that court (…) I want to know what Brazil did to make that decision to sign, just that (…) I want to know why the United States “United States, India and China did not sign the ICC treaty and why did we?” he insisted, according to the G1 portal.

However, the Brazilian president has indicated that he trusts that by the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, which will be held in November 2024, the war in Ukraine will have ended and an agreement will have been reached between the parties in conflict.

President Putin has been the great absentee from the last two G20 summits, those in Bali, in Indonesia, and this last one that is taking place in New Delhi, India, as well as from the recent BRICS meeting, in South Africa, marked during the day before due to the possibility that he would be arrested if he attended.