Havana, Cuba.- Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez rejected Thursday the new condemnation against former President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and demanded his release.

‘Cease the political prison of Lula. We reject his sentence. Let us all join the demand for his release. The fight will continue until justice is done,’ the Foreign Minister wrote on Twitter.

On Wednesday, federal judge Gabriela Hardt sentenced the former president to 12 years and 11 months in prison, who is already serving time for other reasons, considering that he benefited from the repairs in a country house in Atibaia, in the interior of Sao Paulo.

Hardt accepted the argument of the Federal Public Ministry that the former metallurgist consciously participated in a criminal scheme of money laundering and corruption involving the state-owned company Petrobras and contractors.

The former president is accused, even, of knowing that Petrobras directors used their posts to receive an undue advantage in favor of agents and political parties.

In this regard, the MP Paulo Pimenta, says that ‘it is an illegal sentence, which contradicts the jurisprudence of Brazilian law because it is not based on evidence.’

Cuba´s President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, and the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Raul Castro, have reiterated the need to join forces and efforts to free Lula, a victim of political persecution.