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>Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was negotiating his surrender Friday from the headquarters of the steelworkers union where he began his rise to national prominence.

Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was negotiating his surrender Friday from the headquarters of the steelworkers union where he began his rise to national prominence. Photo: SEBASTIAO MOREIRA/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

SÃO PAULO—Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, missed a deadline to turn himself in Friday as he negotiated the terms of his surrender to begin serving a 12-year jail term in a case that has mesmerized this country, said a person familiar with the talks.

The 72-year-old was expected to spend at least a second night in a trade union hall after being ordered on Thursday to surrender by 5 p.m. local time Friday or face arrest.

Mr. da Silva was holed up in the headquarters of a metalworkers union hall in São Bernardo, the industrial suburb of São Paulo where he began his rise to national prominence as a union activist in the 1970s. Both a polarizing and popular figure, the man known across Latin America as Lula had quickly attracted supporters from his Workers’ Party, who gathered outside the union hall and pledged to protect their leader from the police.

The former president’s defenders gathered on a narrow, mostly residential street as Mr. da Silva conferred inside the six-story building, which was draped with banners reading “No to Lula’s imprisonment” and “Election without Lula is a fraud.” A sound truck was parked outside, its giant loudspeakers blasting samba between speeches from Mr. da Silva’s supporters. Street vendors sold beer, ice cream and barbecued meat.

“An innocent man does not surrender,” said Ângela Kinzu, 62, who was among those who arrived at the union headquarters. “We are in a war.”

They and other Brazilians who support Mr. da Silva see the court order and last year’s conviction against him—part of a broad investigation of corruption that has led to the jailing of dozens of public officials and businessmen—as a conspiracy to end his drive to win back the presidency. Polls showed the former president topped all candidates ahead of the October election.

At the union hall, Mr. da Silva’s supporters formed a human barrier to protect their leader through much of Friday. Many wore the red that symbolizes the Workers’ Party, which held power here from 2003 until 2016.

“The right-wing wants to keep the workers away from power,” said Marcos Ferraz, 58, who was selling $7 red T-shirts with Mr. da Silva’s image. “There is a prejudice against the working class.”

Marco Antonio Silva, 26, a law student, said that he joined in to “support and defend democracy.” To him, arresting Mr. da Silva amounts to “an aggression against the constitution.”

The case against Mr. da Silva has led to a spectacular fall from grace for a man who went from fighting a military dictatorship in the early 1980s to leading an increasingly powerful labor movement that brought him to the presidency in 2003.

Assisted by high commodity prices and demand from China, Brazil under Mr. da Silva maintained a balanced federal budget while attracting investment and funding social programs that helped 30 million rise from poverty. That made him famous world-wide, with Barack Obama once hailing him as “the most popular politician on Earth.”

But the China-fueled boom waned in the last decade. His handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, saw Brazil’s debt plunge back into junk status as the economy sank into recession. In 2016, she was impeached and replaced by her conservative former ally, Michel Temer.

Mr. da Silva was found guilty of accepting a penthouse apartment from a construction firm in exchange for favors. The ex-president has denied the charges, and his lawyers have said that he should remain free as he exhausts all appeals.

Write to Jeffrey T. Lewis at jeffrey.lewis@wsj.com, Luciana Magalhães at Luciana.Magalhaes@wsj.com and Paulo Trevisani at paulo.trevisani@wsj.com</s>Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been taken into police custody after a tense showdown with his own supporters.

It comes after 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 does not run - and possibly win - re-election in October.

When he first tried to leave to turn himself in, however, 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 metal workers union headquarters where he had been holed up.

Police vehicles surrounded the union that was the birthplace of da Silva's rise to power, 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 5pm Friday to present himself to police in Curitiba, about 260 miles south-west 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 union headquarters.

"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.

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 Mr Santoro.

"It shows that he wants to emphasise 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 favours 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 in one of the world's most unequal countries.

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 US president Barack Obama once called da Silva the "most popular politician on Earth".

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 such a decision, though doing so from jail would be more complicated.</s>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 PAULO (Reuters) - Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s legal team filed a motion with the Supreme Court on Friday to suspend an order by a lower court judge for him to start serving a 12-year prison sentence, according to court documents.

His legal team, which argued they had not exhausted procedural appeals before the judge issued an order for Lula to turn himself in to authorities, already lost a last-minute appeal on Friday to the country’s top appeals court.</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.</s>Demonstrators against Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva watch as Supreme Court justices’ votes are made public outside the National Congress in Brasilia, Brazil. Brazil’s top court is voting on whether da Silva can stay out of prison while appealing a corruption conviction, a decision that could radically alter October’s presidential election in Latin America’s largest nation. (Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

SAO PAULO — A federal judge issued an arrest warrant on Thursday for former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, dealing a major blow to the once wildly popular leader who was trying to mount a political comeback ahead of October’s elections.

The warrant came several hours after the country’s top body, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, voted 6-5 to deny a request by da Silva to stay out of prison while he appealed a corruption conviction that he contends was simply a way to keep him off the ballot.

Judge Sergio Moro gave da Silva 24 hours to present himself to federal police in the southern city of Curitiba. In a note, Moro said he was giving da Silva the opportunity to come in on his own accord because he had been a president of the nation.

Last year, Moro convicted da Silva of trading favours with a construction company in exchange for the promise of a beachfront apartment. That conviction was upheld by an appeals court in January.

Earlier Thursday, the head of Brazil’s Workers’ Party warned that jailing da Silva would turn Latin America’s largest nation into a “banana republic.” Da Silva’s lawyers put out several statements saying they were filing injunctions in hopes of keeping him out of prison.

Despite the conviction and several other charges against him, da Silva leads preference polls ahead of the presidential election in October.

“We consider this to be a political imprisonment, an imprisonment that will expose Brazil before the world,” said Gleisi Hoffmann, chairwoman of the Workers’ Party. “We will become a banana republic.”

Hoffmann also insisted that da Silva, 72, would be the party’s candidate in October. Da Silva, who Brazilians simply call “Lula,” has not spoken since the ruling.

Like so much in a nation that has become deeply polarized, the reality that the once popular leader would be jailed was being interpreted differently by supporters and detractors.

“Brazil scored a goal against impunity and corruption,” said Congressman Jair Bolsonaro, a right-leaning former army captain who is second in the polls after da Silva.

“It was applied to only one person,” she said. “As if Lula were the only thief in this country.”

Da Silva, president between 2003 and 2010, 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 experienced near weekly police operations and arrests of elite, from top politicians to businessmen like former Odebrecht CEO Marcelo Odebrecht.

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.

The list of targets of the so-called “Operation Car Wash” investigation includes President Michel Temer, who took power in 2016 after da Silva’s successor and protege, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached and ousted from office.

Last year, Temer was twice charged with corruption but remained in office because in both cases Congress, which must vote on criminal cases involving a sitting president, decided to spare him prosecution. Many members of Congress have been charged with corruption or are being investigated.

Da Silva was convicted in July of helping a construction company get sweetheart contracts in exchange for the promise of the apartment. He denies any wrongdoing in that case or in several other corruption cases that have yet to be tried. An appeals court upheld the conviction in January, and the three reviewing magistrates even lengthened the sentence to 12 years and one month.

Technically, the Supreme Federal Tribunal’s decision doesn’t keep da Silva off the ballot. In August, the country’s top electoral court makes final decisions about candidacies. It was expected to deny da Silva’s candidacy under Brazil’s “clean slate” law, which disqualifies people who have had criminal convictions upheld. However, da Silva could appeal such a decision, though doing so from jail would be more complicated.

Sen. Lindbergh Farias from the Workers’ Party said vigils would be organized nationwide beginning on Friday.

“People want to be close to President Lula after this injustice,” he said.

Whether the Workers’ Party will be able to mobilize major demonstrations remains to be seen. During the impeachment trials against Rousseff in 2016, many demonstrations were small despite calls by major unions to take to the streets.</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>His imprisonment was an ignominious turn in the remarkable political career of da Silva, the son of illiterate farmworkers who faced down Brazil’s military dictators as a union leader and helped build a transformational leftist party that governed Brazil for more than 13 years.

His detention was also a momentous development in the coming election in Brazil, upending the race to replace President Michel Temer in October.

Having carved out a sustained and ample lead in the polls, da Silva promised his followers that the Workers’ Party could once again wrest control of Brazil’s destiny, and prioritize policies to narrow the country’s steep inequality.

Succeeding would have been a stunning comeback after the 2016 impeachment of da Silva’s hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff. She was replaced by Temer, a deeply unpopular center-right politician who also stands accused of corruption.

Da Silva is the first former Brazilian president to be remanded into custody since democracy was restored in the mid-1980s and the first former president to have been convicted of corruption.

His imprisonment represents perhaps the biggest triumph in the yearslong effort by a team of crusading judges and prosecutors to upend the endemic graft that has long been a staple of politics and deal making in Brazil.

Before surrendering to federal police authorities, da Silva, 72, accused prosecutors and judges of knowingly pursuing a baseless case against him.

“I do not forgive them for creating the impression that I am a thief,” an indignant da Silva, sounding hoarse, told a throng gathered outside a metalworkers union headquarters outside of São Paulo. For hours on Saturday, in a tense standoff, his ardent supporters had physically blocked his surrender, before finally allowing him to leave.

The prosecution, da Silva charged, was an effort to thwart his vision of a country in which ever more poor people could enroll in universities, go on vacation and buy cars and homes.

“If that was the crime I committed, I want to say that I will continue being a criminal because we’re going to accomplish much more,” da Silva shouted to a crowd that had spent much of the morning chanting that he should not surrender.

During his last hours of freedom, da Silva appeared to acknowledge that his political career is over — at least for now.

“You will have to transform yourselves,” he told supporters. “They must know that the death of a combatant doesn’t end a revolution.”

Months away from Election Day, Brazil’s political left now finds itself without an obvious standard-bearer.

Da Silva did not anoint a successor to take his place on the ballot, suggesting that Workers’ Party leaders have yet to decide who stands the best chance of filling the void.

But, notably, he did single out for compliments two leftist presidential hopefuls from other parties who were with him on stage, Manuela d'Ávila and Guilherme Boulos.

Other candidates who remain in the race include Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right lawmaker who has campaigned on a promise of resorting to harsh tactics to restore security in areas plagued by violence; and a former environmental minister, Marina Silva, who supports the judiciary’s crackdown on corruption and an overhaul of the political system.

But by ending the presidential candidacy of a leader who remains beloved across much of the country, the move by judicial authorities may have called into question the fairness of the October election.

Daniel Aarão Reis, a professor of contemporary history at Federal Fluminense University, said that while da Silva’s prosecution was procedurally sound, it is likely to further shake Brazilians’ faith in democracy, particularly if political rivals who also stand accused of wrongdoing manage to escape accountability.

“It worries me because, whether or not the people who provoked this situation meant it, it’s a blow to democracy,” he said. “Democracy is living a moment of very little prestige.”

“No citizen is above the law, and no one, regardless of how important a leader he may have been, or what position he once held, is entitled to make a mockery of justice,” Brazil’s National Association of Prosecutors said in a statement issued Saturday night. “Institutions are the pillars of democracy.”

Bolsonaro’s reaction to the arrest was minimalist: He tweeted an image of the Brazilian flag.

Da Silva, widely known as Lula, left power in 2011 with extraordinarily high approval ratings at home and a reputation as an effective diplomatic mediator abroad.

Washington initially viewed his rise with apprehension, but his rock star status appeared at its peak when President Barack Obama, during a meeting of heads of state in London in 2009, called da Silva “the most popular politician on Earth.”

Brazil appeared to be on a breathtaking rise when da Silva left office in 2011, poised to cash in on new, enormous oil reserves, and revel in the spotlight that the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro would cast on the country of almost 210 million people.

But his party’s legacy was marred in 2014, when prosecutors began unraveling a giant, convoluted kickback scheme as part of an investigation that became known as Lava Jato, or Car Wash, that has so far resulted in the conviction of 120 people and billions of dollars in restitution payments.

The investigation crippled the state-run oil company, Petrobras, and the giant construction firm, Odebrecht, and contributed to a devastating recession that paved the way for Rousseff’s impeachment, which deeply polarized Brazilians.

The charges da Silva was convicted of were a small chapter in the annals of Lava Jato. He was found guilty last July of accepting a seaside apartment in return for contracts awarded to the construction company OAS.

After a three-judge panel upheld the conviction in January, da Silva asked the country’s two top courts to allow him to remain free while other appeals were considered, but his petitions were rejected.

Da Silva is slated to start serving the sentence in a specially configured cell at the federal police headquarters in the southern city of Curitiba, a building he was on hand to inaugurate as president in 2007.

Da Silva’s legal team said Saturday night that he would continue to appeal his conviction before Brazil’s top courts. He is a defendant in at least seven other cases.

Da Silva will be detained in a small bedroom with a simple, wooden bed, a small table and two windows on the fourth floor of the building.

As news of his arrest broke shortly before 7 p.m., some Brazilians who opposed his re-election celebrated across the country by setting off fireworks and honking horns.

“Decent Brazilians are celebrating this historic moment. Justice has been served,” João Doria, a former mayor of São Paulo, who is believed to have presidential aspirations, said in a statement.

Supporters saw his imprisonment as a tragic end of an era that had brought enormous hope and pride to Brazil.

“Brazil went from having the pop star of international politics to having a supporting actor for a vampire film,” the former foreign minister Celso Amorim said, referring to a parody of Temer by a samba school during the recent Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro. “We get really sad.”

Opposing groups of protesters awaited da Silva’s arrival outside the building where he will be held in Curitiba.

A few hundred supporters wearing the Workers’ Party trademark red chanted to the beat of drums “Free Lula,” and sang a jingle from his first presidential campaign in 1989.

A smaller group of critics of the former president, meanwhile, beat pots and pans as they chanted: “Lula, you thief, your place is in prison.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

MANUELA ANDREONI, ERNESTO LONDOÑO and SHASTA DARLINGTON © 2018 The New York Times</s>Former Brazilian president Lula agrees to turn himself into police
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.