The Supreme Court of Cassation, the last instance of Italian Justice, analyzes this Wednesday (1st), in , Brazil’s second request for the former deputy (-SP) to be extradited. The case refers to the conviction for the armed persecution of a man in 2022, in São Paulo.
The hearing, scheduled to begin in the morning, will analyze the defense’s appeal against the sentence of the Rome Court of Appeal, which authorized Zambelli to be sent back to Brazil in April. The Court of Cassation is expected to communicate its decision this Wednesday.
In August last year, the (Federal Supreme Court) sentenced Zambelli to five years and three months in prison under an initial semi-open regime for illegal possession of a firearm and illegal restraint with the use of a firearm
At the time, she was imprisoned in , where she fled to escape another conviction, for the invasion of the CNJ (National Council of Justice) system and the issuing of a false arrest warrant against the minister , of the STF.
This Wednesday’s trial takes place a month after the same Court of Cassation carried out this first case. The judges accepted the defense’s arguments and stated that the case
The court saw Moraes’ dual role as problematic, as a person injured by one of the crimes and as a member of the judging panel, in addition to reporting the case. In the judge’s assessment, the modality in which the process took place in Brazil meant a “macroscopic violation of the right to defense”.
On the same day, Zambelli was released from the prison she had been in for almost ten months in Rome. According to her lawyer, she is in the Italian capital.
Italian deputy Angelo Bonelli formally charged the Italian government with Zambelli’s location and surveillance measures in place, in view of this second extradition request, which is still open. According to him, there was no response.
One of the scenarios is that the Court of Cassation has a different understanding in relation to the first request and authorizes the extradition. This is because, in the case of the armed persecution, Moraes would have had fewer functions, since the victim of the crime was someone else – and not him – and the rapporteur of the process was the minister.
If the court decides on extradition, the final decision will be passed to the Italian government, through the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio. He will have 45 days after receiving the sentence to give his word. If Zambelli is sent to Brazil, Gilmar Mendes indicated that she will serve her sentence at the Federal District Women’s Penitentiary, known as Colmeia.
During the processing of the extradition requests, Zambelli’s defense argued, in addition to the STF’s lack of impartiality, that Brazilian prison conditions were incompatible with Zambelli’s health status and human rights standards.
The Court of Appeal judges rejected the bias thesis. Regarding prison conditions, they stated in their ruling that the documentation produced by the defense was largely made up of “heterogeneous material and of insufficient evidentiary quality”.
Lawyers also tried to classify the persecution against Luan Araújo as a political crime. The treaty between the countries on the subject prohibits extradition in this case.
The judges also rejected the thesis. For the court, Zambelli’s attitudes offended “individual safety, personal freedom and public security” and that this does not take on a political connotation “just because the author held a public position.”
The issue of Zambelli’s dual citizenship was not considered an obstacle to extradition.
Second most voted federal deputy in the state of São Paulo in 2022, with 946 thousand votes, Zambelli was 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, Zambelli resigned from office in December.
