The Supreme Court of Cassation, the last instance of Italian justice, denied authorization for the former deputy (PL-SP) to be extradited to Brazil. The judges of the last instance annulled the decision, in a resolution communicated shortly after 9pm (4pm in Brasília) to the lawyers.
At the hearing held in the morning in Rome, six judges analyzed, in about an hour, an appeal presented by the defense against the Court of Appeal’s decision. The previous court had been in favor of sending Zambelli to Brazil to serve a prison sentence. Justifications for rejection should be published in the coming days.
The former deputy has already been released. In a video published on social media by her lawyer in Italy, Pieremilio Sammarco, around two hours after the decision was announced, Zambelli appears in front of the Rebibbia penitentiary complex, where she has been detained since July, celebrating the decision.
“This victory was from God, I consecrated our victory to God. He succeeded, he gave strength to our lawyers. Now we are free, thank God, to continue a life of mission”, says Zambelli in the publication.
A Sheet it was discovered that she will sleep tonight in the place where her husband, Aginaldo, has been living these last few months in Rome.
According to lawyer Pieremilio Sammarco, who defends the former deputy in , alleged “procedural defects” were presented as arguments against extradition in , 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 rule on investigating the conditions of the Colmeia (prison to which the former deputy would be sent), such as the size of the cells and the existence of adequate sanitary services”, said the lawyer, at the end of the hearing.
Sammarco also said that Zambelli’s health condition had worsened recently, but did not give details.
The Brazilian government was represented at the hearing by lawyer Enrico Giarda, hired through the AGU (Attorney General of the Union). “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 the ten years of imprisonment 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.
