The Supreme Court of Cassation of Italy judged this Friday morning (22) the defense appeal of former deputy Carla Zambelli (PL-SP). The decision of the last instance of the Italian Court should be communicated to lawyers in the next few hours.
Zambelli’s sending to Brazil, to serve a prison sentence, was authorized, at the end of March, by the Court of Appeal in Rome, where the case began to be processed. and did not participate in the hearing, which lasted about an hour.
According to lawyer Pieremilio Sammarco, who defends the former deputy in Italy, arguments against extradition were presented as alleged “procedural defects” in the judgment carried out by the STF (Supreme Federal Court), prison conditions in the prison in Brazil where she would go and Zambelli’s health status.
“There are several contradictions and omissions in the Court of Appeal’s ruling, such as the fact that it did not comment on the investigation of the conditions at the Hive, such as the size of the cells and the existence of adequate sanitary services,” said the lawyer, at the end of the hearing. If extradited, Zambelli will serve her sentence in Colmeia, a medium security prison in the Federal District.
The appeals court judges had rejected this defense argument about the Hive’s lack of conditions to receive the former deputy. They wrote in the ruling that the material presented by the lawyers “does not reach the evidentiary threshold required to constitute a cause preventing delivery.” And that the information provided by Brazil about the Hive was “institutionally qualified”.
Sammarco also said that Zambelli’s health condition had worsened recently, but did not give details. The defense once again asked her to leave the Rebibbia prison complex in Rome. The request will be evaluated by the Court next Tuesday (26). Shortly after she was arrested, at the end of July, a medical examination confirmed that Zambelli could continue to be detained despite her health problems.
The Brazilian government was represented at the hearing by lawyer Enrico Giarda, hired through the AGU (Advocacia Geral da União). “We ask for the appeal to be rejected and we demonstrate that the Brazilian process cannot be repeated in Italy. The extradition procedure is based on technical and specific arguments, which the Court of Appeal fully examined,” he stated.
Before the hearing, Zambelli’s defense tried to postpone the trial, asking that the two extradition processes be analyzed together on a new date, to be defined. The Court of Cassation judges denied the request. One of the reasons is that, because the former deputy is in prison, decisions regarding her case could not wait for a new date, which would probably be months from now.
Zambelli has two prison sentences to serve in Brazil, which generated two different extradition requests. The first case concerns ten years in prison for the invasion of the CNJ (National Council of Justice) system and the issuance of a false arrest warrant against Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF.
When she was already in Italy, after fleeing Brazil, Zambelli was sentenced to another five years for illegal possession of a firearm and illegal restraint, in the episode in which she pointed a gun at a man in São Paulo.
The Court of Appeal, the previous instance, analyzed the two cases together at the hearings, but produced two different sentences — one at the end of March and the other in mid-April. In both cases, he was in favor of extradition. Shortly after the first sentence, the defense filed an appeal, which will be analyzed this Friday. The second appeal will be evaluated at another date.
If the extradition is confirmed by the Court of Cassation, the case will be sent to the Italian government for a final decision. The Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, has up to 45 days to respond. He is from the Brothers of Italy party, founded by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
If Nordio maintains the court’s opinion, Zambelli could already be sent to Brazil after around 20 days. The defense, however, will still have the possibility of appealing to the Regional Administrative Court against the government’s decision. In this scenario, along with the appeal, a request is made for provisional suspension of the execution of the extradition until the end of the analysis of the case.
Other possible outcomes of this Friday’s hearing are for the Court to deny the extradition or order that the process be redone in the Court of Appeal.
Second most voted federal deputy in the state of São Paulo in 2022, with 946 thousand votes, Zambelli is one of the main names in Bolsonarism. After being spared from impeachment by the Chamber plenary, a decision that was later overturned by the STF, she resigned from her mandate in December.
