Former Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva has said he will give himself up after a court order to begin a 12-year jail term for corruption.

He was speaking on a stage outside the union building near Sao Paulo where he has been staying during his stand-off with the legal authorities.

Two last-minute appeals to have his arrest warrant suspended have failed.

Dilma Rousseff, his impeached successor as president, joined him on the stage as thousands of supporters applauded. </s> SAO BERNARDO DO CAMPO, Brazil (AP) — Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was taken into police custody Saturday after a tense showdown with his own supporters, capping an intense three days that underscored raw emotions over the incarceration of a once wildly popular leader who has been engulfed by corruption allegations.

Just hours earlier, da Silva told thousands of supporters that he would turn himself in to police, but also maintained his innocence and argued his corruption conviction was simply a way for enemies to make sure he doesn't run — and possibly win — re-election in October.

When he first tried to leave the metal workers union headquarters where he was holed up to turn himself in, dozens of supporters blocked a gate where a car carrying da Silva was trying to exit.

"Surround, surround (the building) and don't let them arrest him," chanted supporters. After a few minutes of tense words between guards and supporters, the former president got out of the car and entered the union headquarters.

Police vehicles surrounded the building, raising the fears of clashes. Da Silva emerged a second time shortly after nightfall, this time surrounded by bodyguards who pushed back scores of supporters who tried to stop his advance.

The dramatic scene was the latest development in a whirlwind series of days, which began when the Supreme Federal Tribunal, the country's top court, ruled against his petition on Thursday to remain free while he continued to appeal his conviction.

Judge Sergio Moro, who oversees many of the so-called "Car Wash" cases, then ordered an arrest warrant for da Silva, giving him until 5 p.m. Friday to present himself to police in Curitiba, about 260 miles (417 kilometers) southwest of Sao Bernardo do Campo, and begin serving his 12-year sentence.

Da Silva, who Brazilians simply call "Lula," did no such thing. Instead, he hunkered down with supporters in the same metallurgical union that was the spiritual birthplace of his improbable rise to power in one of the world's most unequal countries.

"The police and 'Car Wash' investigators lied. The prosecutors lied," said da Silva, as a few thousand supporters cheered.

"I don't forgive them for giving society the idea that I am a thief," he continued.

Still, da Silva said he would turn himself in "to go there and face them eye to eye. The more days they leave me (in jail), the more Lulas will be born in this country."

While da Silva spoke, some people cried while others chanted "Free Lula!" When he finished speaking, a sea of supporters carried him on their shoulders back into the building.

Late Saturday, police were flying da Silva to Curitiba, where after processing he will begin serving his sentence.

Mauricio Santoro, a political science professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said that by not complying with the order on Friday da Silva "wanted to demonstrate strength and popularity, showing that he is a political leader capable of gathering a crowd in his support."

Choosing the metal workers union to take refuge, and not the Workers' Party headquarters, was also significant, said Santoro.

"It shows that he wants to emphasize his trajectory as leader of a social movement, rather than his role as leader of a party marked by allegations of corruption," he said.

Last year, Moro convicted da Silva of trading favors with a construction company in exchange for the promise of a beachfront apartment. That conviction was upheld by an appeals court in January. The former president has always denied wrongdoing in that case and in several other corruption cases that have yet to be tried.

Still, his jailing marks a colossal fall from grace for a man who rose from poverty to power against steep odds. During his two administrations, several social welfare programs and a booming economy helped tens of millions come out of abject poverty, making his downfall deeply personal for many Brazilians who saw him as a symbol of hope.

Born in the hardscrabble northeast, da Silva rose through the ranks of the union in the country's industrial south. In 1980, during the military dictatorship, he was arrested in Sao Bernardo do Campo for organizing strikes. He would spend more than a month in jail.

After running for president several times, in 2002 da Silva finally won. He governed from 2003 to 2010, leaving office an international celebrity and with approval ratings in the high 80s.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama once called da Silva the "most popular politician on Earth."

Like so much in a nation that has become deeply polarized, that da Silva would soon be behind bars was being interpreted differently by supporters and detractors.

"We have no choice but to keep our head high. Our struggle will be bigger tomorrow," said Fernando Lauro, a supporter who watched da Silva be taken by police.

"I hope he never gets out, but I fear he will," said Silvia Gend, a 72-year-old housewife in Sao Bernardo do Campo. "Brazil is the country of impunity."

Workers' Party leaders insist that da Silva, 72, will still be the party's candidate in October. Technically, being jailed does not keep him off the ballot.

In August, however, the country's top electoral court makes final decisions about candidacies. It is expected to deny da Silva's candidacy under Brazil's "clean slate" law, which disqualifies people who have had criminal convictions upheld. Da Silva could appeal, though doing so from jail would be more complicated.

The former leader is the latest of many high-profile people to be ensnared in possibly the largest corruption scandal in Latin American history. Over the last four years, Brazilians have seen near weekly police operations and arrests of the elite.

Investigators uncovered a major scheme in which construction companies essentially formed a cartel that doled out inflated contracts from state oil company Petrobras, paying billions in kickbacks to politicians and businessmen.

Peter Prengaman reported from Rio de Janeiro. Associated Press reporter Jill Langlois in Sao Paulo contributed to this report. </s> Sao Bernardo Do Campo : Ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s polarising election frontrunner and leftist icon, was negotiating his surrender after dramatically skipping a first deadline today to start his 12-year prison sentence for corruption.

Holed up with thousands of cheering supporters in the metalworkers’ union building in his hometown of Sao Bernardo do Campo, near Sao Paulo, the 72-year-old let the 5:00 pm (2000 GMT) deadline pass without public comment.

This raised the temperature in the standoff between the leftist former two-term president and Judge Sergio Moro, who heads the mammoth “Car Wash” anti-graft probe and who ordered Lula’s imprisonment.

Given that Lula was effectively surrounded by a human shield, it was clear that a forcible arrest attempt would trigger violence.

But authorities took pains to reduce tensions, downplaying Lula’s defiance and stressing that he was not considered a fugitive — something that would trigger a preventative arrest warrant.

“Lula did not comply with a judicial order,” a spokesman for Moro told AFP, “but everyone knows where he is. He’s not hiding or on the run.”

Politicians from Lula’s Workers Party said he would remain in Sao Bernardo do Campo overnight and that his lawyers were in close negotiations with police over the time and place of the arrest.

“There is a discussion between police and the ex-president’s lawyers and the party is following this. The idea is to avoid the judge ordering preventative arrest, which would aggravate the situation,” said Congressman Carlos Zarattini.

Senator Gleisi Hoffmann tweeted that a Catholic Mass would take place at the union building today in memory of Lula’s late wife Marisa Leticia, who died last year and would now be turning 68.

According to varying Brazilian media reports, Lula was considering surrendering after the Mass or possibly holding out through the weekend. Much of Friday, Lula waited in hope that the country’s top appeals court, the Superior Tribunal of Justice, would temporarily suspend his arrest warrant. However, the petition was rejected shortly before the deadline expired. </s> SAO BERNARDO DO CAMPO: Ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the controversial frontrunner in Brazil's October presidential election, ignored a deadline to surrender and start a 12-year prison sentence for corruption on Friday (Apr 6).

Holed up with thousands of cheering supporters in the metalworkers' union building in his hometown of Sao Bernardo do Campo, near Sao Paulo, the 72-year-old let the 5pm (2000 GMT) deadline pass without public comment.

The development further heated up the drama over attempts to put behind bars the veteran leftist, who ruled from 2003-2011 and leads in polls ahead of the elections.

He was ordered Thursday by Brazil's top anti-corruption judge, Sergio Moro, to surrender voluntarily to police and begin incarceration in the southern city of Curitiba.

Moro gave him 24 hours, saying the cell, a separate room with its own toilet, was ready, and that Lula would not be handcuffed - if he came quietly.

It was not clear what the next step would be. However, local media reported that Lula's lawyers were negotiating the surrender.

It would be impossible for police to arrest him by force without the likelihood of major crowd trouble.

Much of the day, Lula had been waiting in hope that the country's top appeals court, the Superior Tribunal of Justice, would temporarily suspend his arrest warrant. However, the petition was rejected shortly before the deadline expired.

Lula was convicted last year of taking a luxury apartment as a kickback from a big construction company. He lost a lower court appeal in January and saw his sentence increased from nine to 12 years.

But to his Workers' Party faithful, Lula is a victim of a right-wing plot to prevent him from returning to power.

The longer he remained holed up inside the union building, the bigger the crowd grew outside.

Renata Swiecik, an unemployed mother of four who had joined the human shield, urged Lula not to hand himself over.

"We are here to resist to the end. Lula will not be a prisoner in 2018, he'll be president and help the people once more," said Swiecik, 31.

Lula's imprisonment is being celebrated on the right and among prosecutors supporting the "Car Wash" probe, which has revealed systemic, high-level embezzlement and bribery throughout Brazilian business and politics over the last four years.

To them, Lula epitomizes Brazil's corruption-riddled elite. His conviction is the biggest "Car Wash" scalp by far.

"I want Lula in prison, I want a better future and with him in the leadership we won't have that," said Maura Moraes de Oliveira, 51, who works as a maid in Curitiba.

"Not only Lula should be locked up, but all the corrupt, a complete cleaning."

Operation "Car Wash" was named after the service station where agents initially investigated a minor money laundering scheme in 2014, before realizing that they'd stumbled on a gargantuan web of embezzlement and bribery at state oil company Petrobras and right through the political classes.

Lula, who grew up poor and with little formal education before becoming a trade union leader and politician, has long said he will go down fighting.

In theory, once someone has been convicted and lost a lower court appeal, he or she is barred from running for office under Brazil's clean-slate law.

Still, even in prison, Lula has the right to register as a candidate. It would then be up to the Superior Electoral Tribunal to rule on whether his candidacy could stand.

Although Lula would almost certainly be blocked, he could use the process to maintain his political influence. </s> Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has started a 12-year jail sentence for corruption following his arrest on Saturday night after a tense and at time chaotic 50-hour stand-off with authorities.

He becomes the first person who served as his country’s president to be, jailed for a criminal offence. It marks a dramatic fall for Brazil’s most popular leader in over half a century and further roils the South American giant’s already turbulent political scene just six months before presidential elections in October.

Though ineligible to run following his conviction, Lula nevertheless leads all polls in the race which contains no obvious replacement as favourite. He has vowed to continue his campaign from jail.

His detention follows the final failure of his appeal against his conviction last year in a kickback case involving a beach-front apartment and the refusal of the country’s supreme court to grant him a writ of habeas corpus while he appeals to higher courts in Brasília.

From Thursday evening when federal judge Sérgio Moro issued the arrest warrant millions of Brazilians followed the drama of Lula’s drawn-out detention on television. But despite warnings from leaders of his Workers Party that any attempt to arrest him would inflame the country, protests for and against Lula were small and scattered if occasionally violent.

The weekend’s drama started when a defiant Lula ignored an invitation from Judge Moro to present himself to police by 5pm on Friday in the southern city of Curitiba where he was convicted. Instead he barricaded himself inside the headquarters of the trade union in Greater São Paulo where he first rose to national prominence in the 1970s. After negotiations he agreed to hand himself over to police after a mass scheduled for Saturday to mark the birthday of his deceased wife, Marisa Letícia.

The service turned into a political rally during which an impassioned Lula claimed he was being persecuted because his social policies benefited the country’ poor. He vowed to prove his innocence while accusing police, federal prosecutors and judges as well as Brazil’s main conservative media of lying about his case.

After the rally Lula’s first attempt to leave the union headquarters by car was frustrated by militants who sought to resist the detention order. The former president’s legal team reportedly advised that any further delay in surrendering to police would only prejudice future efforts to have his detention suspended. A subsequent attempt to leave on foot surrounded by emotional supporters was successful.

Police first brought him for a medical examination before flying him to Curitiba to start his sentence in a special cell in the city’s federal police building. He is being held in a separate section of the building from other high-profile detainees of the Car Wash anti-corruption investigation that over four years has uncovered multibillion euro corruption schemes involving politicians and powerful private sector contractors across Brazil’s public sector.

Among the detainees being held is Lula’s former finance minister Antônio Palocci, who has incriminated his former boss whom he said had “succumbed to the worst of politics during his government’s best moment”.

The former president was found guilty in the first of several corruption cases against him to come to trial and faces the likelihood of further convictions as the investigations that have destabilised Brazilian politics for the last four years and spread across Latin America continue, despite growing efforts by Brazil’s establishment to neuter the efforts of police and prosecutors. </s> Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, a leftist leader who rose from abject poverty to serve as Brazil's president from 2003 to 2010, is widely tipped to win the country's 2018 general election unless a corruption conviction against the 71-year-old is upheld and he is barred from running.

Once called "the most popular politician on earth" by Barack Obama, the former US president, Lula da Silva was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison last year after being accused of receiving more than $1m in bribes from construction giant OAS.

Lula da Silva is currently free and fighting the charges, but several of Brazil's elite have been ensnared by Operation Car Wash, a huge investigation into a bribes-and-kickbacks network that has shaken the country's political establishment and cost the country more than $40bn.

Led by a small group of idealistic, young Brazilian prosecutors and a crusading judge, the investigation has exposed a vast international web of corruption involving business leaders and their efforts to bribe politicians to win contracts.

Lula da Silva and his lawyers maintain he is innocent, but even if the two-term president is absolved, he faces four other charges under the Car Wash investigation.

"I have peace of mind," he told Al Jazeera in a 2016 Talk to Al Jazeera interview.

"I doubt any prosecutor or police delegate in this country is more honest or more ethical than me."

The former trade union leader turned president is hugely popular in Brazil after overseeing a period of sustained growth that saw millions lifted out of poverty during his presidency between 2003 and 2010.

Under his leadership, the value of Brazil's currency more than doubled against the US dollar, unemployment was at a record low and illiteracy dropped.

However, in 2016, his protegee and successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached after being accused of manipulating federal budgets.

Rousseff denied any wrongdoing and described efforts to remove her as a coup. Still, she was stripped of the presidency in August following her impeachment and was replaced by Michel Temer.

But after Temer, the sitting president, was charged with taking bribes, Lula da Silva is now widely expected to return to office should he stand in the elections.

He currently leads opinion polls by a significant margin while Temer has the lowest approval rating of a president since 1989.

Al Jazeera's Teresa Bo, reporting from the southern city of Porto Alegre on Wednesday, said even if he is found guilty, he still has two appeals left but will not be able to register in time for the August election.

"Lula remains defiant and says he will continue to challenge the judiciary 'until death', and that he will run in this years' elections," she said.

The judge leading the charge, Sergio Moro, is viewed by many Brazilians as a superstar anti-corruption crusader, but others see him as a man on a mission to destroy Lula da Silva, our correspondent said.

Lula da Silva's ascent to the presidency in a country with one of the world's biggest wealth gaps was heralded as a success story of Brazil and he remains the only president to leave office with high approval ratings. </s> Brazil's top appeals court on Friday rejected former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s latest plea that he stay out of prison until he has exhausted all appeals to his corruption conviction, according to a court document.

Lula has been ordered to turn himself in to police by 5 p.m. on Friday to begin serving a 12-year sentence for accepting bribes from an engineering firm in return for help landing contracts with Brazil’s state-run oil company. </s> A Brazilian appellate court has unanimously upheld a corruption conviction imposed on former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – and added years to his prison sentence.

A Brazilian appellate court has unanimously upheld a corruption conviction imposed on former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – and added years to his prison sentence.

The decision was the latest legal setback for Mr da Silva, who was wildly popular as president between 2003 and 2010 but has since been dogged by corruption allegations amid a scandal that has taken down top politicians and business executives in Latin America’s largest nation. While Mr da Silva has several avenues to still get on the October ballot – and his lawyers have indicated they will appeal any setback – the ruling further complicates a political comeback.

Judges sit in an appellate court during a hearing to consider whether to uphold or throw out a corruption conviction against Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Porto Alegre, Brazil (Sylvio Sirangelo/TRF via AP) Many argue that sidelining him could anger millions of his supporters and shake the country’s political stability. A three-judge panel heard arguments from both sides over Mr da Silva’s conviction on corruption and money-laundering charges alleging that he took a payoff from a construction company in return for contracts.

Judge Joao Pedro Gebran Neto was the first to vote. He went beyond the original conviction, saying that jail time should be 12 years and one month, an increase of more than two years from the sentence levied in July. “I consider the culpability in the case extremely high,” he said.

“This is about a former president and a corruption scheme that prevailed for years.” The following two judges agreed on all counts.

While Mr da Silva faces corruption charges in six more cases, the 72-year-old has been leading preference polls for October’s race. Supporters use their mobile phones during a protest in support of ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Rio de Janeiro (Silvia Izquierdo/AP) His Workers’ Party called the decision a “farce” and defiantly declared it would proceed with its plan to register him as its presidential candidate in August.

“We will fight in defence of democracy in all forums, in the judiciary and mainly on the streets,” party chairwoman Gleisi Hoffmann said in a statement. “If some think the story ends with today’s decision, they are very wrong because we do not surrender before injustice.”

With tensions high, authorities closed streets around the courthouse in the southern city of Porto Alegre as the hearing opened. Helicopters hovered above, police patrolled on horses and sharpshooters stood on rooftops. In this deeply polarised, continent-sized nation, the case is part of a larger narrative, with supporters and detractors of Mr da Silva offering their own interpretations.

Mr da Silva and his supporters say it and the other corruption cases are an attempt to keep him from returning to office. They argue it is part of a conspiracy by Brazil’s elite seeking to keep out a president like Mr da Silva who focuses on the poor and levels the playing field in one of the world’s most unequal nations. Detractors note that Mr da Silva and his left-leaning Workers’ Party were running the country while a widespread corruption scheme siphoned billions from state oil company Petrobras and helped Latin America’s largest economy fall into its worst recession in decades.

“I supported Lula long ago, but he became one of the crooks,” said Diego Esteves, a university student in Porto Alegre. Rodrigo Maia, speaker of the lower house of Congress, said that despite having long been a political foe of Mr da Silva, he was not celebrating on Wednesday. “In politics, the best forum for different ideas to do battle is an electoral campaign,” he said in a statement. </s> Brazil's Supreme Court has ruled that ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will be jailed while he appeals against a graft conviction. He is facing 12 years in prison on charges of accepting a bribe but had asked to remain free during his appeal. Lula claims the charges are politically motivated, and designed to prevent him from running for president in October. Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson has taken Lula's case to the UN Human Rights Commission.
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gives a public address alongside his impeached successor Dilma Rousseff in São Bernardo do Campo, saying he will comply with an arrest warrant and begin a 12-year term for corruption after two failed appeals to have the warrant withdrawn. He maintains his innocence.