Lula returns to jail after grandson’s funeral

SAO PAULO: Brazil’s expresident Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returned to prison on Saturday after being allowed to attend the funeral of a grandson who died suddenly at age seven.

Early in the day, the popular leftist leader stepped out of his cell in Curitiba — where he is serving two concurrent 12-year sentences for corruption — and then flew in a small plane to Sao Paulo, some 250 miles to the northeast.

A crowd at the Sao Bernardo do Campo cemetery in a Sao Paulo suburb greeted Lula warmly upon his arrival for the service, shouting ‘Free Lula’ and “Lula, warrior for the Brazilian people.”

Young Arthur Araujo Lula da Silva, whose father Sandro is one of Lula’s five sons, was felled by a sudden bout of meningitis.

As dozens of armed military police surrounded the area, the crowd of supporters at the cemetery numbered perhaps 500, including Lula’s successor Dilma Rousseff and Fernando Haddad, the Workers’ Party candidate for president in 2018. Hundreds of supporters wore the red color of Lula’s Workers’ Party.

At the crematorium room where close friends gathered before Arthur’s open coffin — and where Lula made brief remarks — there were flower wreaths from Lula’s political and trade union allies, even one from Venezuela’s embattled socialist president Nicolas Maduro, the daily Folha de S. Paulo reported. — AFP